Lately published-uniform with this Volume.
FABLES RESPECTING THE POPES
OF THE MIDDLE AGES,
AND
PROPHECIES AND PROPHETIC SPIRIT
OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
BY  DR. DOLLINGER.
EI)I'TF  BY PROF. H. B. SMITH, D.D., OF UNION.'HEOLOGY SEMINARY.
Large 12mo   -          -        $2.25
I)ODD & MEAD, PUBLISHERS.




iLetture 
ON THE
REUNION OF THE CHURCHES
BY JOHN J. I. VON DOLLINGER, D.D., D.C L.,
PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH,
PROVOST OF THE CHAPEL-ROYAL, ETC. ETC.
TRAN.SLATED WITH PREFACE
BY HENRY NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A.,
LATE SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD'Et ingressus est in ea spiritus, et vixerunt; steteruntque super edes suos exercitus grandis
nimis valde. Et dixit ad me; Fili hominis, ossa hcec universa domus Israel est.'
DODD AND MEAD, 762 BROADWAY
1872








To the
REV. HENRY  PARRY  LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L.,
IRELAND PROFESSOR OF EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
CANON OF ST. PAUL'S.
MY DEAR LIDDON,
You will readily believe that there
are many reasons why I should gladly seize the opportunity of dedicating this volume to you, but it will be
sufficient to mention two.  In the first place, it has
long been my wish to put on record some acknowledgment of a friendship which has now lasted nearly
twenty-five years, dating from my first undergraduate
term at Oxford, and which has been to me the source
of so much happiness and so many blessings.  Yet
what could I hope to offer of my own that would be at
all worthy of your acceptance? Here, however, where
for the most part the language alone is mine, and the
thoughts are those of one whom we have both learned




vi                  Dedication.
to love and reverence, is something which I may not
unfitly present and you need not hesitate to accept.
And then, again, I would ask you to welcome this
Dedication, as a little souvenir of the pleasant and
profitable hours we spent together last year at Munich
in the company of the illustrious author.
Wishing you every blessing, and praying that you
may long be spared with health and strength to labour
in your place for those sacred interests, so dear to
both of us, to which Dr. Dollinger has here devoted
the ripe wisdom of his maturest reflections,
I am ever, my dear Liddon,
Most affectionately yours,
H. N. OXENHAM.
NATIVITY OF OUR LADY, 1872.




CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE,.....                       ix
LECTURE 1.
GENERAL REVIEW OF THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE
WORLD,..... 
LECTURE II.
THE DUTY OF CHRISTIAN NATIONS TO THE HEATHEN, AND
ITS GREAT HINDRANCE,....     20
LECTURE III.
DIVISION OF EAST AND WEST: GROUNDS OF HOPE,.     32
LECTURE IV.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION,....     60
LECTURE V.
REACTION TOWARDS UNION ON THE CONTINENT IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY,....     84




viii                   Contents.
LECTURE VI.
PAGE
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, ITS NATURE AND RESULTS,.    103
LECTURE VII.
DIFFICULTIES AND GROUNDS OF HOPE,...    136




PREFA CE.
S OME apology is due to the public both for the
delay in the appearance of this work, and for
the form in which it is now presented to them. The
Lectures here translated were delivered by Dr. Dollinger
in the Great Hall of the Museum at Munich, on Friday
evenings, during the months of February and March
last; but it was his intention to revise and enlarge
them  considerably before publication, and he had
kindly promised to send me the sheets for translation,
as they were successively printed off. But meanwhile
the execution of this design has been delayed beyond
his expectation by the pressure of other engagements,
and he therefore afterwards offered to supply me with
the manuscript of the Lectures, as originally delivered,
from which the present translation has been made. I
shall, of course, hereafter avail myself of the complete
work on its appearance in Germany, should occasion
ix




x                    Preface.
arise for doing so. It is right to add that none of the
reports of the course which appeared in the principal
German  newspapers, and were wholly or partially
reproduced in some of our own, were published with
the  author's  sanction, and that he disclaims all
responsibility for them. The actual text differs in
many  respects from  the report in  the Allgemeive
Zeitung.  This is accordingly the first appearance of
the Lectures, either in Germany or in England, in an
authentic form.  Some notes and references the author
has himself added to the manuscript. For all bracketed
notes I am alone responsible. They are for the most
part simply designed to provide illustrative details of
information, which may not always be familiar to the
general reader.
The momentous question which Dr. Dollinger has
here undertaken to discuss, and to which indeed he
has again and again called attention in several of his
previous works, is one that has long been forcing itself
on the thoughts of serious men in all parts of our
divided Christendom.  Some testimonies to the widespread and growing sense of its importance have been
collected, as well from Catholic as from Anglican writers,
in a former work of mine on the subject, and the evi



Preface.                          xi
dence might be indefinitely multiplied.l  Within  the
last few years only, to such names as Wiseman, Ketteler,
and Dupanloup have been added those of men differing
as widely in many respects both from them and from
each  other,  as  Maret, Gratry,  Perreyve,  Michaud,
Strossmayer, and the martyred  Darboy.  Nor is the
feeling, as will be seen from these Lectures, confined to
one side only.  It is shared  also by Lutheran  as well
as Anglican divines, though probably not as yet to the
same extent by the former.2
We cannot wonder that it should be so.  The direct
contradiction to the will and purpose of our divine
Lord, revealed in the religious divisions of His professed
disciples, would of course alone be a more than sufficient
motive for making every exertion to put an end to a
state of things so displeasing to Him.  But over and
above this, the overwhelming practical interest of the
question is impressing, I might say obtruding, itself
1 See Appendix to my Letter to F. Lockhart on Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon,
2d ed., Washbourne, 1872.
2 See, e.g., some remarkable letters addressed by several Protestant
pastors to Bishop Martin of Paderborn, urging him to use his influence for
the removal of what they allege to be the two chief hindrances to a reunion
of the separated Churches, viz., the compulsory celibacy of the clergy and
the withdrawal of the chalice from the people. The letters are given in
the second appendix to Friedrich's Tagebuch wahrend des Vat. Concils,
pp. 424 sqq.




xii                 Preface.
more prominently every day on the notice even of the
most superficial observers of the existing phenomena,
whether of the Christian or the Heathen world. On
the latter point nothing need be added here to what has
been so fully set forth by the lecturer. The single fact
that, at the end of eighteen centuries, some 800,000,000
of our fellow-men-considerably over two-thirds of the
human race-are still strangers to any form of Christianity, speaks volumes. And it is not the less, but
the more significant, when we call to mind the large
and generous efforts which have been made for their
conversion during the last three centuries,-the immense expenditure of English gold with such absurdly
disproportionate results, and the heroic labours of
Catholic missionaries, who have shed their blood like
water on almost every shore, and yet have gathered in
but a precarious harvest of souls, counted by hundreds
or thousands, when the millions of heathendom should
long since have become obedient to the faith. It was
not thus when Apostles preached, when Augustine, or
Boniface, or Columba went forth to win whole nations
to the Gospel. And why not? They taught a "common Christianity" in a very different sense from that
now attached to the phrase, and the world, beholding




Preface.                   xiii
their unity, believed in Him who sent them. But the
rival preachers of a score of jarring creeds the world
cannot believe in; and for the most part it cuts the
knot by rejecting all alike. We were warned beforehand that it must be so.
I will but add the eloquent testimony of Bishop
Maret on this point: "If, after eighteen centuries,
idolatry prevails over the greater part of the globe;
if Mahometism  desolates once flourishing Christian
countries; if a thinly disguised atheism ravages even
the Christian world, —doubt not that one of the most
powerful causes of so many moral and social miseries,
so many shameful humiliations, lies in  the many
unhappy internal divisions of Christians, which constitute schism and heresy. If the Eastern Churches
were reunited to the Mother Church, if our brethren,
separated from unity by the violent revolutions of the
sixteenth century, were reunited with us, what a new
power of transformation and victory would Christianity display in the world, combining in one all its
living forces, all the elements of regenerated progress,
science, and civilisation. Then indeed should we witness the reign of God and of His Christ on earth.
Everything which can hinder the drawing together




xiv                      Preface.
again  of hearts and  minds, and  the  restoration  of
religious unity, should be regarded as the greatest of
evils, because it is what hinders the greatest of blessings." 
And if we turn our glance on the Christian world, the
portentous results of disunion stare us yet more visibly
in the face.  Scepticism  manifests its presence daily
and hourly among us in a thousand open or insidious
forms. It colours our literature, it controls our policy,
it mounts our pulpits, it aspires to restrain or to formulate our prayers.  And how  do the champions of
orthodoxy essay to meet it?  By ingenious arguments,
which  perhaps  only  half convince themselves;  by
stammering appeals to an undefined authority; or by the
worn-out sophisms of "the Bible and the Bible only"
theory, as though the world could stand on the tortoise,
and the tortoise stand upon space.  But this will not
avail. Protestantism, as a system of positive belief, is
found to be unequal to the crisis.2 If I refer to the
independent witness of a recent writer in the West1 Du Concile Gengral, vol. ii. pp. 387, 8.
2 It is a fact abundantly proved by statistics that religious perplexity is
one main cause of the large increase of insanity in modern times, as also
that suicide is more common in Protestant than in Catholic countries.See Casper's Denkzuvrdigkeiten zur medicin. Statistik, quoted in Buckle's
History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 26.




Preface.                     xv
minster Review, it is not for any novelty in his argument
-for it has often been urged before-still less from
any sympathy with his tone, even where I am  able to
agree with him; but simply because he has defined the
situation from the infidel point of view with edifying
candour and precision.l
Catholicism, he begins by assuring us, is destined to
outlive Protestantism, as well because " its promises are
more satisfactory to the instincts of the vulgar"-that
is, because it better satisfies the religious cravings of
the human soul —-as from its resting on a more philosophical basis.  He is reviewing Dr. Newman's recent
reprint of the 85th of the Tracts for the Times, vindicating the claims of historical as opposed to what is
sometimes called Bible Christianity, and he fully admits
the force of the argument.  He thinks it certain that
"at the date of the publication of the fourth Gospel,
or very shortly afterwards," which can hardly mean
later than the second century, the teaching of the
Church was distinctively Catholic, and reminds us that
the earliest authorities cited for the canon of Scripture
are equally emphatic in asserting, e.g., the, doctrines of
the Eucharistic sacrifice and prayer for the dead. He
1 West. Rev. for July 1872: Art. " Difficulties of Protestantism."




xvi                   Preface.
is naturally not sanguine as to the future spread of
Christianity, and refers for his own purposes to the
comparative failure, which was noticed just now, of
modern missionary efforts. But he is quite convinced
that, wherever it does spread, it will not be in the form
of Protestantism. Indeed, he goes so far as to express
an opinion that, "speaking broadly, it is impossible
now-a-days to convert any one to" a system, which
cannot elicit faith, for it is in fact simply " an arrested
development of free thought," and is already writhing
uneasily under the artificial fetters imposed on it at the
Reformation. It is incapable from its nature of forming
a permanent dwelling-place for the mind, but has done
good service as a temporary resting-place, "which has
happily sheltered man on his way from  bondage to
freedom, from darkness to light, from theology to Truth."
In other words, it has served to break, and thereby
to disguise, the fall from Christian faith into naked
infidelity. The reviewer urges in conclusion, what is
obvious, that the final issue must turn on the admission or denial of the supernatural in any form; and
he might have added that premonitory signs are already
discernible of the approach of the contest, if it is not
actually begun.  That the contending forces will be




Preface.                     xvii
eventually driven by the conditions of the conflict to
range themselves in two, and two only, camps, under
the rival banners of faith or of unbelief, there cannot
be a doubt, and  as little that such  a crisis would
involve "not only the eclipse, but the disappearance
of the system  known as Protestantism," through the
absorption of its positive and negative elements into
the opposite systems to which they respectively belong.
There are two reasons just now for insisting on this
aspect of the case, and which have led me to dwell, at
greater length than its intrinsic merits would require,
on the article in the Westminster Review.  In the first
place, it is well that religious Protestants should bring
themselves to  understand distinctly-and I use the
term, "Protestant," for all who rest their belief on the
Protestant principle of private judgment, as distinct
from  the traditional and historical basis of Catholic
Christianity-on how insecure a tenure they hold those
portions of revealed truth which  they are sincerely
anxious to retain, and how signal must be their discomfiture, if they elect to stand alone against the
advancing forces of unbelief. It should be borne in
1 A studiously vague and general assertion of the supernatural element
in religion was only carried by a majority of 61 to 46 last June in the
Synod of the French Protestant Church, after a prolonged and stormy
b




xviii                  Preface.
mind that Protestantism, when left to itself, has always
betrayed an inherent tendency to gravitate towards
Socinianism.  This has been abundantly illustrated in
the Reformed Churches of Germany and Switzerland,
while a case tried before the English law courts some
forty years ago brought out the startling fact, that
almost the entire Presbyterian body in this country
had abandoned the fundamental tenet which discriminates Christianity from natural religion.l
And it is surely not a little significant in this
connexion that, in the vital controversy now agitating
the Established Church, the Evangelical party, whose
theological culture has never been their strong point,
should have openly and somewhat eagerly joined the
ugly rush against that majestic and venerable formulary which most effectively guards the central verity of
revelation. The circumstance is the more remarkable,
because the Athanasian  Creed touches on no single
doctrine which they do not, equally with their High
Church and Ritualist rivals, profess to believe.  And
it would be the merest excess, not of charity, but of
unreason, to affect to doubt that, with the great majodebate of several days' duration. It contains no distinct assertion of the
divinity of Christ.
1 The case of Lady Hewley's Charity, in 1832.




Preface.                         xix
rity of the assailing party, the real ground of antagonism
lies in a disbelief, more or less consciously acknowledged,
either of some of the doctrinal statements of the Creed,
or of its peremptory assertion of a principle, borne out
by every line of the New Testament, that men will be
held responsible for their acceptance of God's revelation
no less than for their obedience to His moral law.'
Scarcely less suggestive than the Evangelical attitude towards the Athanasian Creed, is the line taken
by (I fear) the great body of English Dissenters on the
Education question, which inevitably reminds one of
the advice of the false mother in Solomon's judgment.
Better that all our children should be brought up in an
"unsectarian" religion-that is, without any faith at
all-than  that any  of them   should  be  taught  the
Apostles' Creed, which  happens  to  be  a  distinctive
formulary  of two, not inconsiderable, Christian  "denominations."2   Such  a system  is a far more serious
l It is worth remarking that those Protestant communities which have
dropped the Athanasian Creed have, as a rule, either retained a very
faltering hold on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, or abandoned it
altogether. The American Episcopal Church cannot fairly be quoted as
an exception, for-not to insist on the necessarily conservative influence
of a hierarchy-it is not yet a century old, and there is understood to be
a growing desire among its more orthodox members for the restoration
of what was hastily cast away in an age which, to say the least, gave a
peculiar prominence to the negative side of its beliefs.
2 Since the above passage was written, it has received a striking con



xx                           Preface.
evil, both in theory and practice, than pure secularism,
for it not only omits all genuine religious teaching,
but supplants it by a spurious substitute. And there is
a further reason for noticing the matter here, because
"the  religious difficulty"  of education, of which  we
have  heard  so  much  during  the  last few  years, is
notoriously  and  solely  due  to  the  divided  state  of
Christendom.   But for that, we  should  never  have
heard of the strange undertaking to construct, what
one  of the  Anglican   Bishops  the  other  day  justly
termed "a new religion," viz., the theological residuum
extracted  by  eliminating  whatever  is  distinctive  in
the teaching of any  of the  hundred  or so of, I was
firmation in the report of a debate on the subject in the Wesleyan Conference, extending over two days and ending in a drawn battle (see Times
of August 14 and 15). The Wesleyans have usually been regarded as
denominationalists, but with many of them the desire for a privilegium
against Anglican and Roman Catholic schools appears to have overpowered
every other feeling. Those who supported the resolution against denominational education dwelt avowedly, and almost exclusively, on the argument that it enabled "Papists" and Anglicans to train their children in
their own faith. As the mover of the resolution (Rev. W. Arthur) put it,
" Their choice lay between Popery and the Bible." It is right to say that
several ministers spoke on the other side, one of whom (Rev. E. E. Jenkins),
honestly avowed that " he would rather have the Bible explained to a
child of his in a Ritualist or Broad Church school than have it simply read
in a cold and lifeless manner in a school where no explanation was given.
He would rather be a Papist than an Atheist or a Unitarian." This is
the language both of Christianity and of common sense; if the Bible is
to be read in school without note or comment, it had much better be read
in Hebrew.




Preface.                         xxi
going  to  say, Christian  sects in  the country.'   But,
in presence of Jews and  Secularists, it may well be
questioned if the existence of -a personal God must
not be relegated to the forbidden category of " denominational" beliefs; about the divinity of Christ there
is confessedly no question at all. And the education
difficulty has its political as well as its religious side.
If a Roman Emperor wished that his people had but
one neck, a modern statesman might with better reason
wish, on  the  lowest ground, that they  had  but one
religion.
It has, indeed, been suggested  that what is really
wanted, and is alone practicable, is " a better management of our differences." And it is well, no doubt, to
cultivate friendly relations with those from  whom  we
differ, so far as it can be done without any compromise
of principle.    A  better understanding  between  the
members of divided  communions is the  first step, as
1 Bishop Magee, whose speech is referred to in the text, speaks of
"126 religious fractions of the country. "-See Guardian for July 24,
1872. It is gratifying to learn that this hopeful experiment is actually
about to be tried in Japan, where it is announced that " the Government
has decided on the promulgation of a new form of religion, after careful
consultation with the most noted exponents of each sect, and all will be
compelled to conform thereto.  The new religion will be enlightened,
simple, and adapted to common sense, and is likely to meet the approval of
all classes." Perhaps it may; the Japanese are said to be about the most
irreligious and immoral people on the face of the earth.




xxii                  Preface.
the lecturer has pointed out, towards the desired
reconciliation; the first, but not the last. To coalesce
on a basis of mutual disagreement,
"Thou, for my sake, at Alla's shrine,
And I at any god's, for thine,"
is one thing; it is quite another to meet in the unity
of a common faith.  The rule of "liberty in what is
doubtful, and charity in all things" is most excellent,
as far as it goes, but it will secure no inward or lasting
harmony between those who are at variance on the
essential truths of revelation. Had the early Church
been united, in its stand against the Pagan empire, on
the principle of agreeing to differ, the ten persecutions
would have been reduced by nine, for there would have
been nobody left to persecute.  It is not without
reason, accordingly, that Dr. Dollinger lays down, as an
indispensable condition of all negotiations for reunion,
the acceptance not only of Holy Scripture, but also
of the three cecumenical Creeds, interpreted by the
teaching of the ancient Church, before East and West
were separated.  This was in fact the ground taken,
and with perfect success for the moment, at the Council
of Florence, though insincerity on both sides, and lust
of dominion on one, reduced the agreement to a fiasco:




Preface.                        xxiii
and we have a more permanent record of the positive
results  of  such  an  appeal in  the independent but
concurrent witness of the dogmatic canons of Trent
and  the  " Orthodox  Confession  of Faith," sanctioned
in 1672 by the Eastern Synod of Bethlehem.'
But it would be a grievous mistake to suppose that
Protestants  alone  are  interested  in  the  reunion  of
Christendom, as neither are they alone responsible for
its divisions. There are few quarrels, public or private,
in which the fault lies wholly on one side, and the
Reformation is certainly not one of them.   The great
ecclesiastical revolution which dates from the ninth
century, as it was the immediate occasion of the separation of East and West, became also the remote cause
of the schism of the sixteenth century, by giving the first
impulse to the new administrative system, which had by
that time attained such enormous dimensions. And there
was unfortunately much on the Catholic side at that
1 It is admitted by theologians, on both sides, that the continued
quarrel between the Latin and Greek Churches still hinges on the dispute
about the primacy, which was its source; and that if this were amicably
settled, the remaining differences, including the question of the Filioque,
would not be difficult of adjustment. See on this point the testimony of a
recent ultramontane writer, Father Tondini, who quotes a dissertation of
the learned Belgian Jesuit, De Buck, Pope of Rome, and Popes of the
Oriental Church, pp. 4, 5; and cf. the speech of the Russian deputy, Dr.
Ossinin, at the Munich Congress last year.




xxiv                 Preface.
critical epoch to deepen and embitter the antagonism
which had long been growing up, and had left its mark on
the Councils, as well as on the literature and religious
life, of the fifteenth century.  To speak of Tetzel's
indulgence-box as the cause of the Reformation, is to
confound sign with substance, but it was one of many
outward indications of a state of things sure sooner or
later to produce an explosion, if it was not remedied.
And the remedy of the counter-reformation, besides
being partial, came too late. Had all Popes of that
age been like-minded with Adrian VI., and all Cardinals
such as Contarini and Sadolet, the religious history of
the last three centuries might have'been a very different
one; and the intolerant spirit which helped to create
the breach has lived on to keep it open and widen it.
We have all, Catholics and Protestants alike, been far
too ready to hug ourselves in self-complacent isolation,
and too little disposed, in the words of " the profound
and pious Mohler," to " stretch a friendly hand to
one another, and exclaim, in  the consciousness of a
common guilt,'We all have erred; the Church alone
cannot err.  We all have sinned; the Church alone is
spotless.'.This open confession of guilt on both sides,"
adds the author, " will be followed by the festival of




Preface.                     xxv
reconciliation."' And that open confession, which M6hler
desiderated forty years ago, is a desideratum  still.  If
Protestants are narrow and unreasonable, and refuse, as
they often do, to look an inch beyond the bare letter
of the Bible, as interpreted by what they call their
private judgment, but what is in reality a mere floating
Protestant tradition, Catholics, on the other hand, are
apt to content themselves with pointing proudly, almost
scornfully, to the unbroken unity of the Church, and
telling outsiders to take care of themselves; the loss
is theirs alone.
The statement is hardly accurate in the letter, for
whenever there has been any serious thought of reconciling East and West, the Popes themselves have always
dealt with the Easterns as constituting a portion of
the Church, not as mere outsiders. But I do not care
to wrangle over niceties of terminology.   However we
interpret the unity of the Church, the broad fact remains that Christendom  is divided.  To the outward
eye, and as a witness to mankind, the Church is no
longer one, as it was in the early ages, as it was in
Western Europe up to the sixteenth century.  Then,
1 Mohler's Symbolism, Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 32, first published in
1832. The passage is quoted in Cardinal Wiseman's Letter to Lord
Shrewsbury.




xxvi                  Preface.
like Him  who sent her, the divine messenger spoke
with authority, for her credentials were visibly written
on her regal brow: incessu patuit dea.  There was
one unfailing answer to doubts and difficulties, which
was felt to be practically conclusive; and though no
one could be better able than St. Augustine to grapple
with intellectual error, his most effective argument lay
in an appeal to fact; Securus judicat orbis terrarum.
It is not so now, when the orbis terrarum  is divided,
and  the  Church's  witness is  discredited  by  the
discordant clamours  of  hostile  sects.   Protestant
countries have no monopoly  of scepticism.   It is
as rife, at the very least, in France and Italy as in
England.    Only the other day a popular French
newspaper announced that "Christianity has fatally
disorganized civilisation, and its advent may be defined
as'the first invasion of the barbarians.'   Now, all
the merit of the barbarians was to  arrive  at the
point where there should be no more barbarians: in
the same way the advantage of Christianity is to arrive
at the point where there will be neither Pagans nor
Christians, but freethinkers, definitely liberated fron
every God."     Why has the French Church, with her
1 Repubiique Franfaise, quoted in the Times of July 15, 1872.




Preface.                       xxvii
vast machinery, her eloquent preachers, her devoted
priesthood, so little hold on the male intellect of the
country, that public opinion is more than tolerant of
Atheism?    Several  answers might  be  given, and
indeed  have  been   given, in  detail  by  those  best
qualified to speak; 1 but they will be found ultimately
to resolve thlleselves into that one radical evil, which
is the fruitful source of such manifold corruption and
disease, the disunion  of Christendom.  To quote the
testimony of one of the ablest of our living writers,
who  cannot certainly be  accused of excessive ecclesiastical  sympathies:  " As  things  are, rationalism
and fatalistic reveries may be laboriously confuted,
but amidst the energies and aspirations of a regenerated
Christendom  they would spontaneously pass away." 
The question before us then is one which, apart from
all motives of charity for others, Catholics, for their
own sakes, cannot afford to ignore.  All sections of our
distracted  Christendom, each  in  its  own  way, are
1 See, e.g. a remarkable passage at the close of Father Gratry's Second
Letter to Mgr. Decharnps (pp. 49, 50), on "the school of error" within
the Church, which is the great hindrance to her progress.
2 Goldwin Smith's Lectures on the Study of History, p. 181. The writer
had just said, "The reunion of Christendom is likely at last to become
a practical aim.  Probably it would be a greater service to humanity,
on philosophical as well as religious grounds, to contribute the smallest
unit towards this consummation, than to construct the most perfect
demonstration of the free personality of man."




xxviii               Preface.
suffering the penalty of a common sin, and till this
is frankly acknowledged on all sides there can be no
hope of reconciliation. I have said that an union on
the basis of mutual disagreement would be at once
useless and impossible, but it is no less unreal to
propose an unconditional surrender.  He who wills
the end must will the means, and those who adopt this
tone towards their separated brethren cannot be credited
with any sincere desire for that peace which-let us
remember-is promised hominibus bonce voluntatis. In
fact, as Dr D6llinger has pointed out, there is no greater
hindrance to reunion than the line taken on the subject
by a powerful party in the Church, which found
singularly clear and forcible expression some years ago
in a characteristic pronouncement of the Dublin Review
against an eirenic publication, then recently issued by
a devout and learned Catholic layman.  "The Church
apostolic, undivided, and universal," rejoined his critic,
"stands alone among other religious communities, with
everything to bestow, nothing to receive." She admits
no right to parley with her, "her call, whether to
individuals or communities, is a summons not to treat
but to surrender.  She sits as judge in her own
controversy, and the only plea she admits is a Con



Preface.                    xxix
fiteor, the only prayer she listens to a Miserere."  How
far such language breathes the true spirit of the Church
or of the Church's Lord, how far it is consistent with
the recorded utterances of some of the wisest of her
pontiffs and the holiest of her Saints, or with the
precedents of former negotiations with external bodies,
I do not stay to examine here.' Those who are familiar
with the facts will have no difficulty in answering the
question for themselves. It is enough for my present
purpose to observe that such is unhappily the habitual
language, and represents the habitual policy, of what
Dr. Newman  has characterized  as an  "aggressive,
insolent faction," but which just now is tyrannously
dominant in the Church.
Let me give but one example of this.  Ten years
ago, Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence, one of the most
influential of the German  episcopate, published  a
work under the title of Liberty, Authority, and the
Church,2 which  contained  the most frank  and full
confession of the terrible evils resulting both from
the earlier rupture between East and West, and from
"the no less deplorable division of the Catholic Church
1 Some remarks on this point will be found in my " Postscript on Catholic
Unity," in Essays on the Reunion of Christendom. Hayes.
2 Freiheit, Autoritdt und Kirche, Mainz, 1862.




xxx                    Preface.
in the West, which for three centuries has preyed on
our vitals, and is the source of such deadly mischief."
He urges and conjures all sincere Christians "to pray
for the reunion of all the Christian confessions," and
" would still more rejoice to see members of different
Christian communities deliberate together for the recital
of some common prayer,"-exactly, by the way, what was
done in England fifteen years ago, and has since been
condemned by the Roman Inquisition.'  The Bishop
goes on to say that nearly all the charges brought against
the Church spring out of misapprehensions, "and these
almost always have their origin in the imperfections and
infirmities of members of the Church;" and then he
pointedly insists, for the information of Protestants,
that the infallibility of the Church " resides only in the
whole body of the Episcopate united to the successor
of St. Peter, and extends only to truths proclaimed by
Christ."2  The work also contained emphatic assertions
of the rights of conscience and the absolute unlawfulness of all religious coercion.   It naturally excited
considerable attention and very general sympathy in' The A. P. U. C. was founded on the feast of the Nativity of our Lady,
1857, including clergy and laity of the English and Roman Catholic
Churches among its first members.
2 The passage is cited at length in my Letter to F. Lockhart, pp. 107110.




Preface.                      xxxi
Germany, and was as naturally most unacceptable to
the party whose principles it so directly contravened,
and who have the ear of Rome.  On account of the
author's position it was not put on the Index, but it
was well understood by himself as well as by others to
be implicitly condemned in the Syllabus,l and, which
is the main point, Bishop Ketteler has found it discreet
to adopt an entirely different line on religious questions
since then.
So much for the tyrannous influence of the dominant
faction.   That their attitude towards external communions, which recognises nothing but a " Confiteor
and a Miserere," must prove, as it always has proved,
absolutely fatal, so far as it extends, to the very idea of
conciliation, is obvious on the face of it, and must be
perfectly obvious to themselves.  Not such was the
attitude or the spirit of Leander, Sancta Clara, and
Panzani, of Bossuet or Spinola, of Adrian VI., Urban viii.,
Innocent xI., Clement xiv.; and only by proceeding in
a spirit the very opposite of this can the wounds of
Christendom  be healed.  There have been many on all
l He attempted indeed in a subsequent pamphlet, Deutschland nach dem
Kriege (1867), to explain away the force of the implied censure by the
strange hypothesis, that the articles of the Syllabus did not contain a
general principle, but only applied to particular countries!




xxxii                   Preface.
sides, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, in former days
as now, who have laboured and longed for that blessed
consummation, and have not lived to see it; some, like
Spinola and Leibnitz, in one generation, Du Pin and
Wake in another, whose names are indelibly associated
with the sacred cause.  And in almost every case the
fairest hopes have been wrecked, not on a religious, but
a political difficulty, as seems only too likely to be the
case with the present unionistic movement in the East,
to which Dr D6llinger has referred.  What the good
Bishop Doyle said of one such attempt is more or less
true of all or nearly all: "its failure was owing more to
Princes than to Priests, more to State policy than to a
difference of belief."   How  true are the concluding
words of the same letter: "They are pride and points
of honour which keep us divided on many subjects,
not a love of Christian humility, charity, and truth! " 
And there are many more, of every clime and age,
in remote English villages, in the seclusion of foreign
convents, in  the  privacy  of domestic  life, before
gleaming altars, on lingering death-beds, who have
watched, and toiled, and prayed for the dawn of that
1 Letter to Lord Ripon (1824), published in Fitzpatrick's Life, Times,
and Correspondence of Dr. Doyle, pp. 421 sqq., and in Union Review,
vol. i. pp. 12 sqq.




Preface.                  xxxiii
second Pentecost, who are praying for it still in the
brightness of the everlasting sunshine, whose names we
know not, and shall never know on earth, over whose
forgotten graves their guardian angels whisper that
most musical of all the Beatitudes, Beati pacifici,
quoniam  filii Dei vocabuntur.  There are many yet
among us who are striving and praying for it now. And
besides all these there is a vast multitude of intercessors, whom  no man  can  number, of every kindred,
tribe, and tongue, sunflushed with the glory of the
Uncreated Vision, and gazing on the pure reflection of
unsullied truth that is mirrored for ever and for ever
on the waveless surface of the crystal sea, whose sight
is purged from all earthly film and their souls from
taint of human passion, who cease not day and night
to cry continually, "How  long, 0 Lord, how  long?"
And we, too, if we really cared about the matter,
should make it a subject of definite contemplation,
definite action, definite, united, persevering, pertinacious prayer.  We should, in the startling language of
Scripture, "weary" the Supreme Judge with our importunities;l we should interest all the glorified host in
1 The original word (in Luke xviii. 5), irwlrna'r ( Vulg. " sugillet ") is far
stronger, and will hardly indeed bear literal translation. A more treC




xxxiv                 Preface.
our supplications to the Most High.  Omnes Sancti et
Sanctce Dei, intercedite pro nobis!
And to all who, in whatever communion, and under
whatever form, worship in sincerity our common Lord,
I would say, Do not put from you the suggestion as
unpractical, or trivial, or inopportune, as a morbid
craving for the satisfaction of an ideal want.  A
craving which is rooted in the deepest instincts of our
moral nature, and is strengthened by menacing phenomena in  the  present condition  of society, whose
accumulated weight presses more heavily each day on
the intellect and conscience, is no mere sickly dream;
and a divine ideal can never be impossible of attainment.  If we have come to look on religious disunion
as a chronic and tolerable evil, or even-and there are
some who seem so to view it-as a positive advantage,
that is only because long use has inured us to a state
of things which ought to be intolerable to Christians,
as it has long been the palmary argument and impregnable stronghold of the mocking enemies of Christ.
"Go ye, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them,"
was the original commission of the Church, and now, at
the end of eighteen centuries of missionary enterprise,
mendous assertion of the duty and efficacy of prayer it would be impossible to conceive.




Preface.                 xxxv
and when every heathen land has been incarnadined
in martyr-blood, three-fourths of mankind are unbaptized! "That they may all be one, even as We are
One, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent
Me," was the Redeemer's dying intercession for His
followers; and now, in this nineteenth century since
His Crucifixion, there are more Christians sects in
England alone than there were believers in the Upper
Room at Jerusalem after the Ascension! And what is
the upshot? Simply this, that every shred of the revelation He committed to His Church is openly disputed
by those who profess to be His disciples, while the
great mass of the poor, to whom especially the Gospel
was to be preached, are left to live the life and die
the death of heathen in a nominally Christian land,
because those who should have taught them His word
and ministered  His sacraments have wasted  their
energies, and lost half their faith and all their authority,
in perpetual bickerings with one another as to what
that word and those sacraments are. Truly, if Christianity be a divine revelation, and the Christian Church
is to be its teacher, the religious outcome of the last
three centuries of division is a spectacle to make
infidels triumph and angels weep.




xxxvi                Preface.
But anyhow the case is hopeless, and it will be our
wisdom to acquiesce quietly in the inevitable: reunion
is an idle dream. Why? Simply because we choose to
make it so. There is a story of a farmer in a country
parish, who was consulted by the  rector, after a
dry season, as to whether he should use the prayer
for rain.  "Well, sir," was the reply, " there is no use
in your praying for rain while the wind continues in
the north."  We have acted for three centuries and
more in the spirit of that pious and intelligent rustic,
and during all that period the theological wind has
set very steadily from the north.  As long as we
continue to emulate his example, we have only ourselves
to thank if it should blow from the same quarter for
the next three centuries. We have not, because we
ask not; we ask, and have not, because we ask amiss.
Too many of us do not ask at all. Like the gods of
Epicurus, "they lie beside their nectar," and regard
the religious condition of the world, if they ever
think about it, much as the deity of a certain school
of modern thinkers is supposed to contemplate, if he
ever does contemplate, the universe he created, if
indeed he  did create it, —with  an otiose if not
cynical detachment. Reunion, they say, would be a




Preface.              xxxvii
miracle, and to  pray for miracles is idle, if not
presumptuous.  And many, who would shrink from
the virtual atheism  of such an avowal, are unreal
when they  pray  for unity, because their normal
standard of conduct and opinion is in direct contradiction with their prayers; out of the same mouth
proceeds blessing and cursing.  If there is truth in
the proverb, Qui laborat orat, if it is unreal to ask for
what we will make no efforts to attain, still less can
we expect our petitions to be heard, if we do all in
our power to thwart them. While we habitually feel
and act on the tacit assumption that our divisions
are irreconcileable, that all the right is on  one
side, and the sole legitimate object of discussion is
not peace, but victory; while we are eager to incriminate and slow to explain, resolved to learn nothing
and forget nothing, to admit no faults on our own
side, and condone none on the other; while we are
never weary of flinging at each other's heads the
fagots of Smithfield  and the  gibbets of Tyburn,
like schoolboys in a snowball match,-so long we
are doing our utmost to create the impossibility we
affect to deplore. Far better let the dead bury their
dead, and, while we respect the constancy of the




xxxviii                    Preface.
sufferers on either side, not seek to make controversial
capital out of past atrocities, which disgraced religion;
still less, as some would have us, desire to emulate
them.  Mary  and  her evil counsellors did  more, no
doubt, than all the Reformers put together, to brand
the tradition of Protestant exclusiveness into the heart
and  conscience  of England; and  we, if we are wise,
shall take  warning by their example, how  unity  can
never be restored.l Actual persecution is, of course,
out of the question in the present state of society, but
1 It is impossible to condemn too strongly the Marian burnings,
whether on grounds of principle or of policy. But it is fair to remember
that the sufferers never shrank from inflicting the penalties they were
ready to endure bravely, when their turn came: they had no difference
with their persecutors about the principle, but only about its application.
Cranmer, of course, I put out of the reckoning altogether.  It may or
may not be true that he held the fingers of the peevish boy in whose
name he misruled England, while forcing him to sign the death-warrant
of a visionary little less orthodox and infinitely more honest than himself;
but anyhow he was no more a genuine persecutor than a genuine martyr.
He burnt impugners of the Real Presence as long as it suited his interests,
and he was burnt for denying it-probably with sincerity, for his range of
belief seems to have been a limited one-after he had solemnly recanted
his denial. But Latimer, who was a typical Reformer and unquestionably honest, preached a sermon worthy of Torquemada, while Prior
Forest was being roasted to death over a slow fire for denying the
spiritual supremacy of Henry VIII. And I am afraid there can be no
doubt that Elizabeth's Jesuit victims would have been equally ready to
burn any one who denied the spiritual or temporal supremacy of the Pope.
" The toleration of heresy," says Sir J. Mackintosh, "was deemed by men
of all persuasions to be as unreasonable as it would now be thought to
propose the impunity of murder." For copious authorities on the Protestant side, see a remarkable article on " The Protestant Theory of
Persecution" in the Rambler for March 1862.




Preface.                 xxxix
the persecuting temper can express itself in a hundred
ways, and is the precise contradictory of that temper
in which alone we can meet our alienated fellowChristians with any prospect of ultimate agreement.
And never surely was the obligation more urgent,
never was there more in the circumstances of the
day to supply both warning and encouragement, than
now.  Ours is in one sense a peculiarly religious age.
Religious questionings, aspirations, doubts, interpenetrate its literature and thought, trouble its policy, and
mingle in the details of its social life.  It organizes
religious meetings, congresses, and synods of every
hue.  The religious question, as it has been said, is the
order of the day. And this is a ground of encouragement.  On the other hand, it is also a very irreligious
age.  Scepticism  has never before been  so  openmouthed, so widespread, and withal so oppressively
respectable as it has recently become.  Its apostles
do not scruple to assure us, with an engaging frankness,
that virtue and vice are "natural products in the same
sense as sugar and vitriol," or that prayer is an obsolete
superstition to be classed with the belief in " witches,
dreams, astrology, and auguries of good or evil luck,"
for which the civilized world will learn to substitute




xl                    Preface.
the equally "ennobling" and "consoling" contemplation of the "solidarity between themselves and what
surrounds them  through  the endless reactions  of
physical laws." But still it is not the mocking scep —
ticism of Tom Paine or Voltaire. It is sedate, refined,
decorous, respectable; it sometimes almost seems to
be devout.  But if we are tempted to let ourselves
imagine that in losing its grossness it has lost its
sting, we are likely to be cruelly undeceived. And
indeed already there are not wanting ominous signs of
the spirit which deluged the Colosseum with Christian
blood, or voices among  those which would banish
the " pale Galilean" from an emancipated world, that
do not suffer us to forget in what guise the goddess
Reason was enthroned, not a century ago, on the high
altar of Notre Dame.
Such moral and intellectual aberrations will never
be disposed of by mere force of reasoning, however
laborious and acute.  They thrive in the cold shade
of our mutual hatreds, and would fade away like
a noisome  exhalation  in  the bracing atmosphere
and clear strong sunshine of a Christendom at unity
with itself.  But if there still remains "the little
rift within the lute," if the trumpet still gives an




Preface.                   xli
uncertain sound, when it summons us to the battle
with Antichrist,-and the spirit of Antichrist is rife
among us now-how shall his assault be met by the
disjointed and spasmodic efforts of a straggling multitude, without leader, discipline, or common watchword?
But it is the glory of Divine Providence to bring good
out of evil, and the infidel aggression, which threatens
us on every side, may well be His predestined instrument for reuniting Christian believers in presence of
a common foe.
On the special bearing of the Reunion question on
the Established Church I will make but one remark
here.  The present agitation against the Athanasian
Creed, and the official relations of the clergy to a
legislature which has already sanctioned adultery, and
is only too likely ere long to sanction incest, must have
brought home two facts very distinctly to the minds
even of its most attached and loyal adherents. In the
first place, they cannot fail to perceive in what a difficult
position an isolated communion finds itself, whatever
may be pleaded in defence or excuse of its isolation,
when called upon to vindicate the most elementary
principles of Christian morality and belief.l  And,
1 By the present law a clergyman is bound, on application, to allow the
d




xlii                      Preface.
secondly, these difficulties afford a fresh illustration of
the insecure  tenure on  which  the Establishment, as
such, holds its ground.l And disestablishment, whenever it comes, while leaving the Church more free to
negotiate with external bodies, will also make the need
for external support more urgent, by withdrawing the
prestige and cohesive power supplied by union with the
State.
And now, I am  afraid I have detained  the reader
too  long, if indeed  he  has  allowed  himself  to  be
detained, from studying testimony far weightier and
more authoritative than any I could hope to give. It
is in  itself a remarkable  fact, that "the venerable
Nestor of Catholic theology," as he has been styled,
whose life has been spent as a Catholic professor and
prelate in the very centre of northern Catholicism, and
who has himself, in  former days, devoted  the  vast
resources of his intellect and learning to the exposure
use of his church for the re-marriage (so-called) of a divorced parishioner,
whether guilty of previous adultery or not, and may be compelled to
marry the " innocent party " himself; every such pretended marriage being
of course a nullity and a sacrilege. A notorious case occurred not long
ago in one of the principal parish churches of London.
1 This is expressly recognised in Dr. Pusey's letter on the subject, published in the Times of Aug. 13.




Preface.                    xliii
of Protestant error,l should, during the last twelve
years, have scarcely published a single work without
pointedly introducing this question of Reunion, which
he has now, when ultramontanism  has just won its
crowning triumph, set himself expressly to discuss.
Speaking from  the platform  of a long experience, a
profound  acquaintance with the past history of the
Church, and an extensive familiarity with the present
condition of both Catholic and Protestant society, he
declares that union to be at once a supreme necessity
of  the  Christian  commonwealth  and  a  perfectly
practicable achievement.  It is not the voice of a
youthful zealot, or a dreaming  mystic, or a  fiery
reformer, which addresses us, but a venerable priest,
full of years and of honours, cautious by temperament,
and of a nation pre-eminent for its critical acumen,
conservative and  Catholic to the  backbone in his
instincts and habits, who sums up in these weighty
words the ccncentrated convictions of a lifetime.  It
is indeed the utterance of a mitis sapientia, chastened
by long  years of toil and  trial, but also  of an
enthusiasm, in the best and truest sense of the word,
z See, e.g. his Die Reformation in 3 vols. and his Martin Luther.




xliv                  Preface.
which only shines out with brighter lustre through the
veil of patient suffering and advancing age, because it
is based on the faith of an unerring promise, and lives
in the habitual vision of the world beyond the grave.
H. N. O.
FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF OUR LADY, 1872.




LECTURE I.
GENERAL REVIEW OF THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF
THE WORLD.
THE Christian portion of the human family may be
reckoned at some 350 million souls, and includes
about thirty per cent. of the inhabitants of the world.
But Christians are divided into many larger or smaller
communities or churches, which mutually exclude each
other, allowing no communion of worship, sacraments,
or prayer, and accusing one another of errors or departures from the teaching of Christ so serious as to
endanger salvation.
Divisions and formations of separate churches were
not indeed infrequent during the first thousand years
after Christ. But they were generally of short duration,
and after a while were reabsorbed into the great Catholic
Church. So it was with the Churches which took their
rise from the Arian controversies, and those which
had separated mainly on ethical grounds, referring to
A




2           Reunion of the Churches.
ecclesiastical discipline, such as the Novatians, Donatists, Montanists, and  most of the Western sects.
But this cannot be said of the separations and newly
formed communities of the last thousand years. These
still continue, that is, the principal parties or churches,
with, on the whole, no diminution of vital and expansive
power.  Let us take a bird's-eye view of them.
The Greek  Catholic or Eastern  Church, which
numbers about seventy-five million members, in Russia,
Turkey, and Greece, has separated from the Roman
Catholic, or Western Church, which contains about 180
millions. This separation began about the middle of
the eleventh century, but was only consummated in
the thirteenth, in consequence of the taking of Constantinople and violent subjugation of the Greeks by
Westerns acting under papal inspiration.  To this
Church, which  takes the name of "Orthodox," are
closely related the Nestorians, the remnant of a Church
once widely spread in the interior of Asia, which has
been separated from the rest of the Christian world
since the middle of the fifth century, in consequence of
the controversies about the Person of Christ, and the
Monophysites, who separated about the same time, and
from similar causes, as representatives of the opposite




Religious Condition of the World.          3
view, and formed a far more numerous body than the
Nestorians, comprising three national Churches, the
Armenian, the Coptic in Egypt, and the Abyssinian.
And as the Church has been separated since the
twelfth century into two numerically unequal halves,
each going its own way and accusing the other of
schism and heresy, so in the sixteenth century came the
great split in the Western or Latin Church, which cut
far deeper.  Out of the reforming movement which
after 1517 took possession of the whole populace of
Western Europe, sprang by degrees new ecclesiastical
societies, which are generically termed Protestant. And
hence three great systems have grown up. There is
first the Lutheran, covering Germany, Scandinavia, and
the eastern coasts of Russia, about thirty millions
strong; then the Reformed, including some twelve
million inhabitants of Switzerland, the Netherlands,
Scotland, and parts of Germany and Hungary.  Distinguished from both these is the English Episcopal
Church, still as yet the State Church, which has kept
closer in its constitution and worship to the two ancient
Churches of the East and West, and from the comparative brevity and vagueness of the Thirty-nine Articles
which form its doctrinal confession, is on the one hand




4           Reunion of the Churches.
less widely removed from Catholic dogmas, while on
the other it allows more room for differences of teaching and interpretation.
Meanwhile, besides these great national Churches
there sprang up at and after the time of the Reformation
many smaller sects, which, though several have died
out, not only still survive-chiefly in England and
North America-but are constantly being increased in
number. There are at present about a hundred of these
smaller religious communities, numbering some 18,000
members. Many of them have never extended beyond
the land of their birth, and are hardly known by
name elsewhere.  Others, especially the Anabaptists,
count their adherents by millions. Nor are these sects
always based on doctrinal distinctions.  Sometimes
peculiarities in social arrangements or worship, or
methods of education and individual culture, form the
leading characteristic, as is shown in the case of the
Moravians and the English and American Methodists.
It is chiefly in the Anglo-Saxon race, in both its English
and American branches, that the capacity and inclination for forming sects has developed itself, while the
German people, if we except the Swabian branch, has
never manifested such a tendency.




Religious Condition of the World.            5
The circle of thought within which most of these
sects revolve is a very narrow one, and the differences
are often confined to points of infinitesimal importance.
Not unfrequently jealousy or love of notoriety, or even
a financial speculation, is the inspiring motive of the
founders of a new sect; but the mere fact of their so
often succeeding proves how ready the people are to
welcome such associations.
It is true that smaller communities are sometimes
distinguished by a stricter discipline and higher code
of morality, for the individual is more supported and
upheld by the body of which he is a member, more
closely watched and far more dependent on the good
opinion of the rest.  This moral earnestness, and
abstinence at least from ordinary vices, is generally,
e.g., to be observed in the Anabaptist settlements,
and their example benefits the members of other bodies
also.
Many  of these little  communities may exist for
centuries  without either injuring  or profiting  the
rest of the world.  They lead a quiet life, far from
the busy throng of men, sometimes closely hemmed in
by the adherents of antagonistic creeds, and thus, as
it were, welded together, or perhaps united also by ties




6          Reunion of the Churches.
of blood.  And so they maintain themselves with
indestructible vigour in spite of constant dangers and
ill-treatment. In this way the Nestorians or Christians
of St. Thomas have now  existed for 1300 years in
East India, and the Copts still longer in Egypt.
We thus find two principal families of Christian
Churches,-first the ancient Churches, whose continuity
has never been interrupted, and which reach up by a
regular succession to the first beginnings of Christianity,
however great may have been their internal changes;
such are the Eastern Church with its daughters, the
Russian, Armenian, Coptic, and Nestorian; and the
Western Catholic Church. The other family is composed of those Churches which have issued directly or
indirectly from that powerful religious movement called
the Reformation, and the communities and sects which
have again broken off from them.
This great number of divisions and separate Churches
has its good as well as its evil consequences, but we
shall have no doubt on a closer inspection as to which
preponderate. As to the first, it may be said that every
new sect or Church is an experiment, or a trial of certain
doctrines or usages and regulations peculiar to the sect.
Here Gamaliel's maxim may be applied, and Church




Relzgious Condition of the World.          7
history'regarded as a great course of experiments; what
has held its own, or even increased in strength with
the lapse of time, has conquered for itself the right of
permanence, while what passes away and disappears
under the stream was not worth preserving. But then
history and experience contradict this view.  Islam,
which must be considered at bottom a Christian heresy,
the bastard offspring of a Christian father and Jewish
mother, and is indeed more closely allied to Christianity  than  Manicheeism, which  is  reckoned  a
Christian sect,-Islam  has now maintained for 1250
years an at least outwardly unshaken dominion over a
large portion of mankind, 120 millions, and moreover
still makes fresh advances every year in Africa, Australia, and the interior of India, which exceed the
progress of Christianity in those countries.  It has
made large encroachments on Christianity, from which
it has alienated whole regions, without, on the other
hand, suffering any important losses through conversion
to our faith. And yet how clear it is to us that history
has already pronounced sentence on this religion, and
sealed its rejection, when we consider the once flourishing, now fallen, condition of those lands where Islam
prevails, and of their denizens. Such are Asia Minor,




8           Reunion of the Chuzrches.
Syria, Persia, Cyprus, Egypt, and a closer inspection
proves that it is precisely to their false religion that
their unhappy condition and gradual decay and extinction are due. Nor is this at all inconsistent with the
fact that the same religion has benefited peoples in
a lower stage of development, as has been recently
observed in the case of negroes converted to Mahometanism in South Africa.
It cannot be denied that there is something repulsive in the present aspect of the Christian world, with
its sharply-divided  and hostile Churches and sects,
mutually hating and incriminating one another. And
were we not accustomed to the sight from our youth up, it
would strike us as still uglier, and the contrast between
the idea and the reality would be more glaring in our
eyes. In all the other highest departments of life, in
science, in art, the power of attraction and union of
minds asserts itself, and sooner or later dissonance and
hatred are lost in harmony.  With religion alone it is
different; what according to its inmost essence was
meant to be the most powerful bond of union, because
possessed and filled with love, has been the cause of
so many divisions —what was to establish peace has
kindled strife and bloody wars-what was to give men




Religious Condition of the World.           9
certainty  and  confidence has provoked doubt. and
planted mistrust in their minds.  The division of the
two great ancient Churches of East and West is, or
rather was, unmeaning, because of their essential unity
of doctrine; now, on the other hand, since July 18,
1870, it is different. And here permit me to observe
how perilous may be the consequences of this ecclesiastical division in the immediate future.
There can be no question that, since the end of the
Franco-German war, the Eastern question is the weighti,est, and at all events far the most difficult, question of
the day.  Considered from a purely political point of
view, it must be called simply insoluble; and yet on
its solution hinges the future of Austria, and in no
slight degree of the world generally, which has now to
take in the German Empire.  No doubt time might
eventually bring a solution, but only in the distant
future; for the Turkish people, which now tyrannizes
over millions of Christians, is, so to speak, at the
point of death; it decreases considerably every year,
while the Christians steadily increase. But the situation is too intolerable, and the impatience of mankind
too great, to wait for the solution of time, and the
great crisis is constantly forcing its way to the front.




io          Reunion of the Churches.
Russians and Greeks-the great majority, that is, of
the  population of the Empire-are  co-religionists,
members of the same Church. Will Russia be willing
or able to look on quietly much longer on a situation
such as all correspondents on the spot describe it
to be, which no diplomatic intervention can touch,
because it is grounded in the very nature of things,
inasmuch as for the Mahometan conscience there is
no rule but the Koran, which breathes only hatred and
contempt for Christians? And thus all the efforts of
England, France, and Austria to avert the catastrophe
have as yet been fruitless, except for gaining time.
Russia alone holds the keys of the destiny of the
Turkish Empire. And who will contradict Russia if
she decides that it is a duty to be carried out by force
of arms, to improve the desperate condition of the Christians in that Empire? Have not all the European
powers acted from time to time on this principle? But
if only an ecclesiastical union between East and West
were brought about, how completely would the whole
situation be changed! A general co-operation of the
great Christian powers would then become possible for
warding off the danger from  both the Austrian and
German Empires, and a solution in accordance with the




Religious Condition of the World.        I 
balance of power in Europe might be found. More
than that: slight as is the real difference between the
Russo-Greek and Latin Churches, the Russian people
are profoundly impressed with the belief, long since
studiously fostered by their rulers, that theirs is the
sole true and legitimate Church, and all foreign nations
are to be regarded as heretical and unbelieving, and
that consequently every foreign war is a religious war
of believers against unbelievers. It will be remembered by what means the Emperor Nicholas sought to
increase and accentuate this national prejudice. His
proclamation of March 26, 1848, is well known: "Hear
and bow down, ye Gentiles, for God is with us;" and
his speech to the Russian and Polish Bishops, on May
26, 1849: "The true faith survives in Russia only; in
the West it is utterly lost." The Czar Alexander II.,
also, after his accession, addressed the army as "the
true soldiers and champions of the Church, the throne,
and the fatherland "-so that the Russian soldier is inspired by the belief that his first duty is to defend the
Church with his arms. It is obvious what a lever this
view supplies, and what an enthusiasm it may kindle in
war, and how grave would be the danger for Germany
if ever an anti-German or Panslavist party succeeded in




12          Reunion of the Churches.
involving the colossal Empire in a war with us, and this
war came to be considered by Russia as a religious
war.
On the other hand, the Churches which sprang from
the Reformation of the sixteenth century have been
gradually, and for the most part reluctantly, urged or
violently driven into separation by profound differences
of doctrine, and when once all intercommunion had
been entirely broken off, the original differences of doctrine grew wider, and were moulded into systems whose
hard inflexible letter made all reconciliation impossible.
Historically considered, we know that the Reformation
was inevitable, and that, when no room was allowed it
in the bosom of the ancient Church, a breach of unity
was the necessary consequence. Nor can we blind
ourselves to the fact that it has had many beneficial
results, and has in various ways proved a gain even to
the ancient Church which was so hostile to it. We see
that it has created a rich intellectual world, and given
an impulse to every form of mental activity. It has
become the most powerful and permanent force in
modern history. But the three centuries and a half of
its existence have apparently sufficed to bring out and
mature whatever spiritual resources it contained within




Religious Condition of the World.        13
itself. That period has also supplied evidence that these
new ecclesiastical creations have faults and defects
of their own which they have no inherent power of
remedying, and that they are incapable of really and
permanently satisfying all the religious needs of mankind. The morbid hankering after division, the discontent of individuals, the incompetence to form any
church organizations standing firmly on their own
foundations, have long been sensibly felt; and it
is impossible not to perceive that in the first heat
of the struggle and passionate excitement of the Reformation tempest, many doctrines and practices of the
ancient Church were much too hastily rejected, leaving
a gap it is difficult to fill up. The time will come, and
in the opinion and desire of many is already come,
when the Petrine and Pauline Churches will develope
into a Johannean Church, or, as used to be said in
mediaeval times, to the period of the Father and the
Son will succeed the age of the Holy Ghost. And this
would be brought about by the existing Churches being
content to learn and receive of one another, and to
impart to one another their peculiar possessions and
privileges, and thus enter into the noblest community
of goods, but above all, by their setting a higher price on




14          Reunion of the Churches.
the doctrines and creeds which they have inherited and
confess in common than on what divides them. Many
will ask whether this is possible. I reply that it must
be possible, for it is a duty. No doubt a great purification and renewal of the Church in the sixteenth century was a pressing need: the condition of things had
become untenable and intolerable.  But this process
might have been accomplished without the divisions
which grew out of it, whereas not only have the Catholics separated from the Protestants, but among these
last, the Lutherans have separated from the Reformed
(Calvinists), and the Anglicans from both alike. In
this then we must acknowledge a grievous fault of men,
originating in their passions and sinful errors, as history
abundantly testifies. On that point all schools and
parties are substantially agreed, only that each throws
the whole blame, or the greater part of it, on its opponents. Every Church maintains that the rest are bound
to unite with it, and thus atone for the crime of their
forefathers.
That Christ, the Founder of the Church, desired and
enjoined its unity is clear. In His Eucharistic prayer
we read, "That they all may be one; that as Thou,
Father, art in Me and I in Thee, they also may be one in




Religious Condition of the World.        15
Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me."'
Nay, this unity is, as He furtherprays, to be a perfect
one, and therefore the most penetrating and purest conceivable among men. And here it is especially to be
noted that this unity of Christian believers is itself to
serve as the means to a further end; it is to be a testimony
for the world in general, and for all nations, of the truth
and divinity of the teaching of Christ. And such it
was in the early ages. " See how these Christians love
one another," was then a common saying of the heathen.
According to the will of our Lord, men ought always to
be able to say, "A religion which unites its adherents,
and holds together a vast society so closely, without any
coercion, through the Spirit which animates it, bears the
impress of its truth and divinity." And thereby He
has of course given us to understand that ecclesiastical
divisions and a multiplicity of separate Churches will
produce just the opposite impression on non-Christian
nations, and on many Christians too, and will be to them
a great stumblingblock and occasion of serious doubt
as to the truth of Christianity. Any one who wishes
to realize this has only to ask some educated Jew
resident among us what impression the strife and
controversy of the Churches makes upon him.
1 John xvii. 21.




16          Rezunion of the Churches.
At the same time, no Church can ignore the command
and commission to teach and baptize heathen nations.
It is a duty and mission laid upon us to bring within
the reach of foreign nations the benefits of civilisation,
culture, moral improvement, and elevation of both
family and civil life, by the only possible means, of
religious instruction and ecclesiastical organization,
whereby we ourselves obtained them. But more than
two-thirds of the inhabitants of the world are heathen;
there are still 800 million souls unconverted to Christianity. And yet we may truly say that almost the
whole human race is possessed with a feeling of restlessness unknown even in the ages of the great migration of nations, while at the same time the wonderfully
increased facilities of intercourse have roused a passion
for travel, and an irresistible impulse to more intimate
union among different peoples. The most remote, obscure, and unknown corners of the earth are explored,
all the laboriously constructed barriers of earlier days
give way to pressure from without, or are torn down
by the nations which erected them, and we observe
with surprise, in how many parts of the earth civilized
men and barbarians, Christians and heathen, jostle one
another, so that in America Chinese meet and mingle
with Europeans. We see how nations which have long




Religious Condition of the World.          7
remained sunk in the lowest depth of moral or intellectual stagnation, are suddenly drawn into the vortex of
the great world-stream which has broken in upon them.
It seems as though no nation of the world was to be
allowed any longer to go on vegetating independently
on its old foundations. Even the great civilized nations
of Eastern Asia, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Japanese,
are constrained to enter into European conditions and
requirements, and to appropriate the arts and methods
of education of the Christian West. But this picture,
which I have only indicated by a few touches here,
while on the one side it encourages the brightest hopes,
discloses on the other some dark spots. The first is
the fact, more and more forcing itself on the notice of
observers, that many of the peoples now dwelling on the
earth are not only incapable of any historical existence,
but are inevitably doomed to destruction, and are, some
slowly, some rapidly, fading away. The Indians in
North and South America, the negroes in Australia, the
inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, the Hottentots in
South Africa, and other tribes, are disappearing. Of
the once numerous tribes of North America, many are
already extinct, and their very names forgotten. The
most harmless contact with strangers, or the mere
B




I8         eReunion of the Churches.
presence of Europeans or their descendants, is enough
to bring havoc on many of the native races.
The study of geography has revealed a yet darker
side in the present condition of the nations. Nature
herself, the very soil, groans under the burden and curse
of a false religion. —for when the people degenerate,
nature herself grows brutalized and depraved.  The
earth is given men to till, but irreligious or misbelieving populations destroy instead of cultivating it;
under their hands it becomes unfruitful, and loses its
grace and vegetation.  Towns and villages decay, and
gradually perish, and where once was a rich country
and busy population, there is a howling wilderness.
No land under Moslem rule can now be called a flourishing one. In the region between the Tigris and Euphrates, the ancient Chaldea, the cradle of the human
race, there is a widespread desolation, little agriculture, only a few decayed and impoverished towns, no
villages, and a mere  roving population, who know
nothing of their ancestors, and sink deeper every year
into a state of utter barbarism.  All those fair and
populous cities of which history tells, that vast, civilized
and flourishing population which held its place there
far into the middle ages, have disappeared, and if the




Religious Condition of the World.          I9
reason is asked, there is but one reply-It is the work
of a false religion! What a spectacle is presented now
by the once great and powerful Persian Empire, a
country more than twice the size of Germany, but with
only some five million inhabitants, with few towns, and
none of which whole quarters are not in ruins, pillaged
by a wretched despotic government, and now  lying
helpless under the assault of a deadly famine, while it
feebly awaits the hour when Russia may please to take
it in hand. And yet the very religion which exhibits
these phenomena in Turkey, North Africa, and Egypt,
and which one might suppose to be gradually dying out
through the decay of the peoples who are under its
curse, shows itself elsewhere full of youthful vigour and
elasticity. In the Indian Archipelago and the interior
of Africa, from  the Niger to the Cape, it is in rapid
advance, conquering whole heathen kingdoms in its
course, and makes progress even among the Christian
Abyssinians. But unfortunately there is no other religion which has so deeply-rooted a hatred to Christianity
as Mahometanism, and this hatred is engrained into
every nation which embraces it.
1 [As regards the hollow and unprogressive character of Turkish civilisation, cf. Newman's Lectures on the Turks, Lect. iv. "Barbarism and
Civilisation."]




LECTURE II.
THE DUTY OF CHRISTIAN NATIONS TO THE HEATHEN, AND
ITS GREAT HINDRANCE.'W'17E are met here by an objection which requires to
be disposed of. I will state it in the words
of a high authority on the subject of ethnology: "Do
not deceive yourselves; every nation has its own religion. Catholicity was and is impossible. The German,
the Italian, and the Greek have and always had different religions, because they are different nations. We
should not speak of Christianity so much as of Christian nations, and of each of these in particular, for it is
the national mind which really apprehends and interprets the message according to its capacity." It is true
that the author of this passage belongs to a people with
whom religion and nationality are so completely identified that the one covers and sustains the other, and
neither can exist apart.  But his view is contradicted
20




Dutfy to the Heathen and its Hindrance.  21
by the whole course of Christian history, and not only
Christianity but Mahometanism has the character df a
world-wide religion, destined to embrace many and
diverse nationalities. Turks, Arabians, and Persians are
as unlike each other as any three nations on about the
same level of civilisation well can be, and yet all these
have the same religion; and are not the Scotch and Swiss
Protestants of wholly different nationality though they
have the same religion? There is only so much truth
in the view in question, that, in the first place, there
are nations whose moral and spiritual condition is so
deplorably low, that they have no aptitude for a spiritual
religion like the Christian.  Such, for instance, are the
Papuas of New  Holland, those most wretched and
apparently most hopelessly degraded of human beings,
on whom the labours of missionaries for long years have
been wasted. It is true, secondly, that a religion which
has once got possession of a nation interpenetrates, and
in a sense transforms, the national character, and thus
no doubt brings out differences, the cause of which
might be confounded with the effect, if it were to be
deduced from  the original character of the people,
whereas it is really the result of a religious faith received
from without. It must further be admitted, that how



22          Reunion of the Churches.
ever close the similarity of views and Church organization, the apprehension and practice of a religion will
vary widely according to national temperament, and
these differences will not be removed or equalized by
the mere fact of two nations belonging to the same
great Church. Thus, for instance, a German Catholic,
suddenly transported to Calabria, and master of the
language, would find it difficult to realize that he and
his neighbours possessed the same religion, so strange
would the materialistic and magical distortion of Christianity appear to him. When, again, he first came in
contact with the religious notions and practices of a
baptized Indian in South America, what violence would
he have to do to his feelings before he could realize
that they both professed the same faith; while, on the
other hand a married pair in Germany, of whom one is
a believing Catholic and the other a believing Protestant, can carry on domestic worship and Bible-reading
together for years in perfect harmony.
It cannot then be denied that the great Christian
powers have a call and a duty  to extend to the
heathen nations under their dominion, or within the
sphere of their influence, the benefits of civilisation.
For even those nations which are really cultivated, and




Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance.  23
possess a literature, art, and a kind of civilisation of
their own, such as the Chinese and Japanese, are not,
properly speaking, civilized, for they want that humanizing which a morality based on the laws of righteousness
and love to man can alone supply, and that depends on
religion. There is therefore only one kind of civilisation, which is the product of the Christian spirit, and
those nations alone possess a genuine civilisation
which have passed under the discipline of the Christian
Church, and are still learning in that school. The
antithesis to this is barbarism; and it is no paradox, but
a notorious fact, that cultivated nations such as those
named just now are at the same time barbarous. Even
in the bosom of Christian civilisation there must be
a constant struggle against the symptoms threatening,
either from above or below, a relapse into barbarism.
The gravity of the danger has just been exemplified in
the frightful tragedy of the Paris Commune, and what
is connected with it all over Europe.  And therefore
what has been called the internal or domestic mission
of Europe must be as carefully attended to as the
external mission to the heathen; indeed, the former is
the more pressing and indispensable of the two.
But here I must explain more precisely what I under



24          Reunion of the Churches.
stand by civilisation, and what I mean by the duty
incumbent on the great Christian states and nations,
first towards themselves, and then towards the heathen
world. Our whole social order, every public and private
institution or mode of life, rests, or should rest, on the
following truths:-Before God all men are equal, all
are called to the highest attainable moral and spiritual
perfection, and thence to happiness, and all should love
one another as brothers; there should be no castes and
no slavery. Every man is a free person, not to be
treated as a means or a thing, but as an end in himself.
There must therefore be a free development and expression of all powers and capabilities, and legal right of
exercising them, limited by due regard for the common
liberty of all. Marriage is an institution consecrated by
religion on the basis of monogamy and the equal rights
of the wife.  The father's right over his children is
limited and controlled by society, whence child-murder
is prohibited, and the State compels parents to provide
for the training and education of their children. Labour
and chastity are recognised as moral and religious duties,
and the relation of the civil power to its subjects as
consecrated by religion, so that obedience to law, and
lawful authority as ordained by God, becomes a duty,




Duty to the Heathenz and its Hindrance.  2 5
as it is also a duty for authority to keep within lawful
limits, without arbitrary caprice or tyranny.
It is the contrary of these ideas and conditions which
meets us everywhere in  the non-Christian  world,
whether Buddhist, Brahminical, or Mahometan. Above
all, there is everywhere child-murder, especially of
female children, and that too practised by the mothers
themselves. The woman is a being of lower grade, so
that throughout the East it is commonly supposed that
only men have souls, and accordingly women are oppressed, maltreated, shut out from all means of education, bought and sold like merchandise, and surrendered
to the arbitrary caprice of men like slaves or beasts of
burden; and thence comes the system of polygamy,
so fatal wherever it is tolerated, and the dissolution of
family life which is inseparable from it. Everywhere,
too, a disesteem of human life prevails, which is often
wantonly lavished to a frightful extent.
It is an oppressive thought that from four to five
hundred millions belong to a religion like the Buddhist,
which connects with the doctrine of transmigration of
souls that of the " Nirvana," holding forth to man as
his supreme end a condition of passive and otiose
unconsciousness, and commending to him, as the truest




26          Rezznion of the Churches.
and highest virtue, the negation of activity, will, desire,
or thought. And where Buddhism  ends Brahminism
begins, in whose meshes are held between 130 and 140
million Hindus. Here we have a gross Pantheism,
with a worship that takes the form of the most indiscriminate idolatry; the crudest arrogance and presumption in the Brahmins, combined with the utmost
contempt of man in the case of the lower castes. A
cow is more honoured than a Sudra, and a Pariah
can be murdered with impunity; there are no rights
of man, but only of caste.
And now let us take a glance at those nations
whose position in the world entails on them  the
care of the portion  of mankind which stands in
grievous need of help.  There is England, whose
empire on the Ganges has been established for a century, and now embraces all Hindustan, which on the
whole rules with a wisdom, justice, and clemency of
which history records few examples. There is Russia,
whose giant arms embrace the whole of Northern,
Western, and Eastern Asia; and France, to which
Northern Africa belongs. And what happened to England in the East Indies is happening to both of them:
they will be driven on from conquest to conquest.




Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance.  27
Russia especially cannot stand still; she must become
more and more the arbiter of the destiny of North and
Middle Asia.  Does she possess the capacities for doing
justice to this mission, the greatest and most difficult
which can be imposed on any nation or state? England
has proved her capacity; Russia is still at the beginning of the great work assigned to her, and has to show
that she is equal to the task, and understands not only
how to conquer, but how  to rule and civilize.  Is it
not above all requisite that the Russian Church should
recognise in the overwhelming duties which are more
and more pressing upon her every day, a motive for
abandoning her old exclusiveness, and seeking, through
union with other Churches, a renewal of her spirit and
vigour, and greater versatility of powers?
England  has  bestowed  on  her Hindu  subjects,
late indeed, and in larger measure and more liberal
sense since 1829, all the privileges of her own higher
culture and civil order, so far as the people are capable
of receiving them; there are now numerous universities
and schools of every sort there, widow-burning and
exposure of children is forbidden, the administration
of justice is organized, the exclusiveness of castes will
not be able to hold its ground much longer, countless




28          Reunion of the Churches.
newspapers and magazines find a large circle of readers.
But all this will not suffice to give the millions of India
what they chiefly need-a great moral purification and
improvement. The inspiring breath of religion can alone
effect that. The Christian missions there have accomplished very little in proportion to their efforts and the
greatness of their task, and have scarcely stirred the
surface of the vast slough of heathenism. Not only
in Hindustan; the three hundred years of Catholic
and the fifty years of Protestant missions are rich in
examples of admirable devotion, persevering energy,
and  heroic self-sacrifice; noble martyr blood has
flowed in streams, and flows still every year. But
when we ask for the result of so many sacrifices, and
so vast an apparatus, we are disappointed, and can
hardly help feeling that the distinguished powers which
would have produced such rich fruits at home have
been wasted abroad on sterile soil. It is true that
many Indian tribes, whose conversion seemed finally
achieved, have died out and left no trace, in spite of
their Christianity.  The once flourishing missions of
the Jesuits in North America and Paraguay have long
since expired. Even among the cultivated races of
India, in Camboja, Siam, and Burmah, only a few




Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance.  29
thousand converts have been won by the missionary
labour of above a thousand years; and, moreover, the
Indian Christians have the reputation of getting baptized for interested motives, and easily falling away.
It is, above all, one of the rarest things to find a permanent settlement of heathen converts with a native
priesthood. As to the Protestant missions, their own
friends admit that only a tiny fraction of the heathen
population has as yet been, I do not say actually converted, but even prepared for conversion, and that if
the apparatus and energies employed are measured by
the results, an unfavourable judgment must be formed
of the missionary work altogether.
Our surprise is diminished when we discover, on
looking into the narratives of missionaries and travellers,
how the European Christians carry with them  everywhere their divisions and sectarian spirit; how, for
instance, in East India, twenty different churches and
sects are labouring at the conversion of the Hindus,
each endeavouring to encroach upon the rest, destroy
their settlements, and gain over their proselytes. And
what is true there is true equally elsewhere, so that
Christianity presents itself to the intelligent heathen
under the repulsive aspect of division and uncertainty.




30          Reunion of the Churches.
In Tahiti, the French Government years ago took possession of the Protestant missions and handed them
over to French Catholic emissaries. We know how
dear this arbitrary procedure cost the Government of
Louis Philippe, on account of the pecuniary indemnification paid to the English missionary Pritchard, which
was so cried out against in France.  In Madagascar,
the emissaries of the rival Churches, Catholic and Protestant, brought matters to such a pass that King
Radema oscillated for a year between them, and when
he was murdered each party charged the other with the
crime, and the mutual hatred and endeavours to supplant one another still continue.  In 1845 the Protestant missionaries were ejected from Fernando Po by
the Spaniards, who laid claim to the island. That is
the spectacle presented by Christians to the gaze of the
heathen world. Christ says that every kingdom divided
against itself shall be destroyed. We understand the
failure of missionaries. And that is not all. What
is to Christians the holiest and most venerable of all
places, the birth-land of our faith, where Christ taught,
lived, and suffered, is now the meeting-place of Churches
that hate one another. Greeks, Russians, Latins, Armenians, Copts, Jacobites, Protestants of various sects, all




Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance.  3I
have there their fortresses and entrenchments, and are
intent on making fresh conquests for the rival Churches.
To the shame of the Christian name, Turkish soldiers
have to interfere between rival parties of Christians,
who would else tear one another to pieces in the holy
places, and the Pasha holds the key of the Holy
Sepulchre. The strife between Latins and Greeks for
the possession of the chapel in 1852 was the immediate occasion of the Crimean war.
Truly every one who values the name of Christian
should daily pray to God for a fresh outpouring of the
Spirit of Unity, that we may keep a new Pentecost of
enlightenment, peace, and brotherly love.




LECTURE III.
DIVISION OF EAST AND WEST: GROUNDS OF HOPE.
W~ HEN we speak of the hopes of reunion of separated Churches, it is obvious that the first point
to be thought of is to prepare the way for a better
understanding, for taking counsel together, and for discovering eirenic explanations of the existing confessions
of faith. The first thing is to distinguish dogma from
opinion, traditional doctrine from the artificial products
of theology, use from abuse, to remove well-grounded
causes of scandal, and to restore what has become corrupted to its original form. Two divided Churches cannot rush at once into each other's arms, like two friends
meeting after a long separation  And we see what
infinite difficulty a single difference in doctrine may
occasion, and how it may frustrate the most various
and well-meant endeavours, in the separation of the
Lutheran and Reformed Churches, which is not yet
32




Division of East and West.                 33
by any means wholly got rid of, notwithstanding the
grand union between them.l There is needed a powerful and dominant spirit of union, such as is not often
found in the course of centuries, and a common controlling principle independent of individual caprice.
Above all, the union of Churches is only then possible,
when a high measure of mental culture is found in
connexion with religious intelligence and zeal. From
a lower intellectual standpoint differences of rite and
ceremonial are regarded as questions on which salvation hinges, and instead of quiet and peaceful inquiry
men rush to arms.  Among  Mahometans almost all
differences have been decided by the sword, the restoration of unity  meant the conquest and extermination
of a sect; and  thus religious wars have lasted  for
centuries among them  down  to  quite  recent times.
Among  Christians religious wars have been  chiefly
carried on when great moral corruption turned religious
zeal into fanaticism, as in the Albigensian wars in the
south of France, and the later contests there between
Protestants and Catholics.
1 [The Lutheran and Reformed (or Calvinistic) Churches of Germany were
united by Frederick-William IIi. of Prussia in 1817, under the name of the
c" Evangelical Church " (Evangelische Kirche), which is still the Protestant
State Church. But the union was only partially successful. See Krummacher's Autobiography, pp. 95, 96.]
C




34          Reunion of he Churches.
If we look round among the nations to see where
there is any disposition to take part in the work of
pacification, we must put aside the Romance nations,
Spanish, Italian, and even French, partly on account
of their religious indifference, partly because of their
exclusive devotion to political questions and interests;
and because too they do not feel the sting of separation,
from  belonging entirely, or almost entirely, to one
Church.  Nor can we look to North America, where the
sectarian spirit is still in full bloom, and the passion
for division is so widely spread. With the Slavonic
peoples the national sentiment is just now  preponderant, and forces higher religious considerations into
the background.  There remain England and Germany.
In England the friends of union are a numerous and
daily increasing body. The whole movement of the
Oxford school, which has been advancing for the last
thirty-five years-what used to be called "Puseyism,"
and is now  called "Ritualism"-is essentially, and
for the most part consciously, directed to union with
the Western  Catholic  and  the Eastern  Churches.1
But, on the other hand, the sharply defined Protestant
1 For some years past [since 1863] a magazine expressly devoted to this
object has been published in England,-the Union Review.




Division of East and West.          35
spirit and antipathy as well to Rome as to everything,
whether in creed or ritual, that exceeds the bare letter
of Scripture, is nowhere more deeply rooted in the
popular mind than in England. This Calvinistic spirit,
as it may well be termed, is peculiarly powerful in the
great communities of Baptists, Congregationalists, and
Wesleyans, and reacts from them  on the members of
the Established Church. And there must be a fundamental change in the condition of the Established
Church itself, if it means to deal with the question of
union in earnest; it must abandon its position as a
State Church, which makes it at once too narrow and
too broad, too lax and too stiff, too free in one sense
and too dependent in another.
And so we come to Germany. In the German
Empire the Catholics now form  one-third, the Protestants two-thirds of the population. If we count the
Austrian provinces, the two Churches are about equal
in numbers.  This situation is peculiar to us Germans
among all nations. Only the two great neighbouring
countries of Holland and Switzerland exhibit a somewhat similar phenomenon.  In every other nation one
Church, whether Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, or
Protestant, immensely preponderates, if it does not




36           Reunion of the Churches.
prevail alone.  But we have suffered so unspeakably
from this religious division, which pierces through the
body of the nation like a sharp sword, and our weakness, dismemberment, and humiliation, stand in such
close relation of cause and effect to our division of
Churches, that the belief is constantly forcing itself on
every German familiar with the history of his country,
that where the religious split began and the schism
originated, there the reconciliation must follow, and the
division must lead to a higher and better unity. That
would be the tragical expiation in the great drama of
our history.
Meanwhile the numerical proportion of the members
of different Churches is not the main point. Far more
important is the relative proportion of powers and
capabilities which can neither be counted nor weighed;
and this leads to the observation that in Germany the
overwhelming preponderance, or rather domination, in
science and literature, is on the Protestant side.  Our
belles-lettres, and nearly all our scientific literature, if
we except some medical works, is almost entirely Protestant. In theology especially the disproportion is so
great that the Protestant theology is at least six times
richer than the Catholic in quantity and quality. The




Division of East and West.             37
main cause of this is unquestionably to be found in
the former condition of the Catholic schools and universities; in the oppressive Latin influence, fatal to
intellectual life, which lay like a dead weight on the
culture and education of Catholic countries, and the
defective character of the schools intrusted to a foreign
and essentially un-German Order, which through its systematic neglect and contempt of the German language,
its inadequate classical teaching and its formal method,
failed to implant in its scholars either the capacity or
the materials of thought, either style or power of expression, thirst for knowledge, or perseverance in seeking it.
For two centuries and a half this state of things continued, and its consequences are still constantly felt.
However, for the object we are now considering, the
reconciliation of the Churches, this inferiority of one
side might tell favourably, and almost be reckoned a
gain. For when the end in view is to unite those
who are divided, it is essential that at least one party
should be conscious of its own deficiencies, and desirous
of sharing the benefits and privileges of the other.
The present state of things in Germany is this: Catholics and Protestants are united by community of speech,
literature, manners, laws, and administration of justice,




38          Reunion of the Churches.
-by everything, in short, which binds men together,while the gulf between them in Church matters is far
wider than that which separates Catholics from members
of the Russo-Greek Church. The Protestants have often
wished and sought for reunion with the Catholic Church
of the West; but there has been only one attempt on
their part, almost immediately abandoned, to come to
an understanding with the Eastern Church, when, in
1575, the Tiibingen theologians entered into negotiations with Jeremiah, Patriarch of Constantinople. But
a comparison of their respective confessions then led
both parties to the conclusion that the doctrinal and
ecclesiastical differences were too great for any union
to be effected.  Nor could even the transfer of the
Protestant Baltic provinces and their university to
Russia produce any change in this cool, self-sufficient,
and exclusive way of looking at the question.  But
this cannot continue, and it is certainly indispensable
for members of the Latin Catholic Church, as soon as
they enter into conciliatory negotiations with Protestants, never to act without reference to the Eastern
Church, or, still better, in concert with its members;
or else the attempt to bridge over one chasm might help
to widen and deepen another no less deplorable and




Division of East and West.           39
displeasing to God.  And to leave out the English
Church from our attempts would be to drop a link no
less indispensable than precious in the chain we are
seeking to reunite.
But we cannot undertake the healing of a schism
without first having a clear view of its original causes
and subsequent course. Let us begin with the older
split. How and why was the Christian East divided
from the West?
In the earlier centuries the distinction of Eastern
and Western Churches simply meant a distinction in
geographical site and language, and hence later on they
came often to be called the Greek and Latin Church.
As Christianity passed from East to West, all Christian
documents and writings were for a long time-till
towards the end of the second century-composed in
Greek only, and even in Rome the Greek language
prevailed for a considerable time among Christians.
Thus did the Eastern portion of the Church for a long
time enjoy a complete intellectual superiority; the
Westerns had to learn from their Greek co-religionists,
and to receive from  them  their ecclesiastical and
theological education. All Latin theological literature
before St. Augustine is in substance the application or




40          Reunion of the Churches.
imitation of Greek models. From the fourth century
the Bishop of Constantinople advanced more and more
to the headship of the whole Eastern Church; and the
strength, life, and learning of the Church became more
and more concentrated in this imperial metropolis.
Rome vainly sought to reduce the dignity of the
Bishops and Patriarchs of New Rome, as it was called;
it was too completely involved in the circumstances of
the Greek Empire, and too well adapted to the needs
of the Eastern countries and Churches, and became so
indispensable when the other great Sees of Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem  had fallen under Moslem
dominion, and their Churches were gradually disappearing. After the northern migration each Church went
its own way; the union between Rome and Constantinople, often interrupted by quarrels, was always
restored after a longer or shorter interval, but the
alienation increased.  The other Western Churches
in Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany had no
direct relations with the East. The establishment of
the Carlovingian and afterwards of the German Empire,
was regarded at Constantinople as an usurpation and
violation of the rights of what claimed to be the sole
legitimate representative of the ancient Roman Empire.




Division of East and West.           4I
Moreover, many Roman rites began more and more to
vary from the Eastern form, as in the use of unleavened
bread in the Eucharist, and afterwards in the withdrawal of the chalice, and disuse of immersion in
Baptism. The most important point of difference was
the addition of Filioque to the common creed, forced
by the Franks on Rome after long resistance, whence
sprang the controversy about the Procession of the
Holy Ghost, which has lasted to this day.
Yet it was not till quite the middle of the twelfth
century, notwithstanding all the soreness and growing
alienation on both sides, that communion between the
Churches was broken off. But the Crusades, the acts
of violence perpetrated by the Latins who often behaved insolently to the weaker Greeks, and above all
the new system of papal absolutism, to which even
the Byzantine Emperors were now expected to succumb, all conspired to make a public and complete
breach inevitable. Then, in 1204, a crusading army
conquered Constantinople and the greatest part of the
Empire, and established a Latin Empire there, which
the Popes took under their guidance and protection.
The whole Eastern Church was to be Latinized, and a
complete system of ecclesiastico-political tyranny was




42          Reunior of the Churches.
organized-a yoke which seemed utterly intolerable to
the Greeks, and produced a deep hatred against the
Westerns, especially against Rome, that survived for
centuries.  The seizure and sacking of the capital
followed, with circumstances of horrible atrocity and
profanation of churches, and then the split both in
feeling and in fact was consummated;-in fact, by
Innocent III. arbitrarily imposing Latin Bishops on the
Greek Churches, and thereby declaring all Easterns
heretics and schismatics. Within sixty years (in 1261)
the Latin Empire again fell, and with it fell the
violently imposed Latin hierarchy.  But the restored
Greek Empire was weak and imperilled.  The hostility
of the West, especially of the Popes, had to be bought
off at any price; and so the Emperor let Pope
Gregory   arrange the terms of union as he pleased at
the Council of Lyons in 1274. But to carry it out was
impossible in the face of universal opposition, and with
the Emperor's death the work fell to pieces. A new
union was effected a hundred and sixty years later at
Florence, which again was simply a work of necessity
and compulsion. The Empire had fallen, with the
exception of the capital; all else was in the hands of
the Turks, who were preparing to strike the last blow,




Division of East and West.          43
and it was thought that the Pope alone, through his
wealth and authority in the West, could avert it. After
long negotiations, in which the Pope and his theologians
yielded something, and the Greeks, under compulsion of
their Emperor, reluctantly and insincerely submitted to
the conditions imposed, the decree of union was drawn
up, which has since then continued to be the test
required by Rome of all Orientals and Russians coming
into her communion.  But as the Greeks had only
submitted under stress of necessity, the work fell to
pieces in the next few years, and two Greek Councils
condemned the Florentine decrees.
Already, from the thirteenth century, the conviction
had been gaining ground, both in East and West, that
the great hindrance to union lay not in theological
and ceremonial differences, but in the Roman claims to
dominion over Church and State. The Greek Church,
relying on its tradition and rich ecclesiastical literature,
and clinging tenaciously to all that had been established
at the time of the great movements and definitions of
the fourth and fifth centuries, was suddenly called
upon, in the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, to
accept a form of absolute monarchical Church-government for which there was no precedent or evidence




44          Reunion of the Churches.
in its former history and literature, which had been
developed in the West first in the ninth and then in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and there only on
the strength of a long series of forgeries and inventions,
by which the Western clergy had been deceived. The
same means were now of course employed for circumventing the Greeks. In Councils, in conferences, and
in writings used against them, they were met with the
same forged authorities, or with others constructed for
their special benefit; but then the attempt proved
generally a failure, for the learned Greeks, of whom
there were always a considerable body, were too well
informed and too familiar with the views of the ancient
Church.  The only result of such attempts was an
increased mistrust on the side of the Greeks, who got
accustomed to reject every overture suspiciously, as an
attack on the freedom of the Eastern Church and its
loyal adherence to the traditional deposit.
But meanwhile the great and growing Russian
Empire had become the centre of Greek Christianity,
and the daughter Church of Russia left a mere honorary primacy, without real power, to the mother
Church on the Bosphorus and  its Patriarch.  For
132 years, from  1588 to 1720, Russia had a Patri



Division of East and West.                  45
arch of her own.l  But in all points of doctrine and
usage the Greek type was preserved unchanged. Just
at the time of the erection of the Patriarchate began
also  the  efforts of Rome and  the Jesuits to  bring
about an  union  of the  Churches in  Poland, which
then still included whole districts belonging to the
Greek rite, in Lithuania and in  Russia.  In Poland
and Lithuania the attempt succeeded by means of the
Bishops taken  from  noble  Polish  families.   As all
the externals of worship  were left unchanged, and
the question of the Filiogue was unintelligible both to
people and clergy, the union simply consisted in throwing off the Patriarch of Constantinople and submitting
to the Pope. All this, however, was the work of force
and intrigue, dictated by motives of policy and ambition. The Lithuanians were to be completely separated
from the Muscovite Empire, to which they were bound
by  ties both  of race and religion.  The antagonism
between Russia, which was constantly advancing, and
Poland, which was constantly growing weaker and more
I [By an ukase of January 25, 1721, Peter the Great abolished the Patriarchate of Moscow, which had been established with the consent of the
four Eastern Patriarchs, and substituted the " Most Holy Governing
Synod "-the composition of which has been subsequently changed more
than once-as the supreme authority in the Russian Church. To this
change the Patriarch of Constantinople assented two years afterwards.]




46          Reunion of the Churches.
anarchical, has shaped the whole Church-history of the
Slavonic world from the middle of the sixteenth century to this day. The attempt of the Poles to seat two
impostors (the false Demetriuses) side by side on the
Russian throne sprang from the same origin; they were
to subjugate the Russian Church to the Pope. The
only result attained, after many persecutions and acts
of sanguinary violence, was the internal split of the
Polish nation. The nobles and higher clergy remained
Uniate or Latin, while the people and  the lower
clergy were Greek, or at least ready and inclined to
return to the Russian  or separate Greek Church.
These unionist efforts conducted by the Jesuits, with
their brutal tyranny, have had unforeseen consequences
of world-wide import. They have led at once to the
aggrandizement of Russia and the downfall of Poland;
to the first, by inspiring the Russian people with that
crusading spirit or proud national feeling of " the world
against us and we against the world," which taught
them to regard every foreign war as a war of religion;
to the dissolution of Poland, because its religious
divisions could not be healed, nor yet be pacified by
the establishment of civil equality. Besides the system
of elective monarchy and. the anarchy and venality of




Dizvision ofEast and West.             47
its nobles, the chief cause of the destruction of Poland
was religious dissent and the intervention of Russia,
when appealed to for the protection of its co-religionists.  From  the time of Peter the Great Poland
was dependent on the will of the Czar, and yet it proceeded with an incomprehensible blindness to exclude
its numerous non-Catholic citizens from all offices and
posts, and to oppress them  in other ways.  A  long
series of religious wars, always carried on with horrible
cruelty, extends through the later history of Poland,
even over the first partition.
The aggrandizement of Russia since the middle of
the seventeenth century had been mainly due to the
Czars undertaking the charge of their foreign co-religionists and seeking to draw them over to themselves.
Catherine II. wished to reap the harvest sown by her
predecessors during the last 130 years, and incorporate
Poland, where it was possible, with the Russian Empire.  By the two partitions of 1772 and 1793, she had
placed whole dioceses of the Uniate Church, including
two in Galicia, and in 1796 several millions of Uniates,
under Russian rule. From that time forward it became
a fixed aim of Russian policy to abolish the union, and
to bring back these millions-sometimes by gentle




48           Reunion of the Churches.
means, where necessary by violence-into the bosom of
the Greek Church.  The higher Polish clergy with the
Jesuits had paved the way for this, by drawing over the
nobility to the Latin rite against the former agreement,
so that the people who had remained true to the Greek
rite felt alienated from them even in religious matters.
The clergy themselves had often Latinized, and thereby
increased the confusion and division. And so it was
easy for the Russian government to dissolve the union
in this kingdom divided against itself. The method
adopted was to leave the people to choose whether to
remain Latins or to return to the "Mother Church."
They almost always chose the latter. Under the Czar
Nicholas, up to 1839, there were two million Uniates
in Russia, but by an ukase of March 25 that year,
they also were brought over to the national Church.
And so at last of the great Uniate Church of the north,
which once contained several millions, there is nothing
left but a few poor fragments in the diocese of Ohelm.
And Catherine understood well enough to whom she
owed her chief successes in Poland; when Clement xiv.
suppressed the Jesuit Order,l she received them grate1 [The Jesuit Order was suppressed by Clement xiv. (Ganganelli) in
1773, and restored by Pius vii. in 1814, when some of its older members
were still alive.]




Division of East and West.           49
fully as educators of the Polish nobility and counsellors
of the Kings and Bishops who had played so effectively
into the hands of Russia. By her command the Order
with its revenues continued to exist in her dominions.
The long history of this union, this ecclesiastical
tragedy, which had its beginning, middle, and end in
violence, persecution, oppression, and bloodshed, and
closed with the destruction of a once mighty kingdom,
teaches us how a union of divided Churches is not to
be effected.
In Galicia, South Hungary, and Transylvania, there
are still Uniate Churches, including together two
millions and a half of souls.  But everywhere the
mixture of the Roman and Greek rite, or the superseding of the latter by the former, which a section of
the clergy are always aiming at, causes disturbances
and perplexity of conscience, and endangers the continuance of the union.
In general, the Eastern Church has remained where
it was when the two halves of Christendom were still in
communion.  Since then it has been disturbed by no
important doctrinal controversies, and there has accordingly been no occasion for dogmatic definitions. Its
theology has remained thoroughly patristic and tradiD




50          Reunion of the Churches.
tional, keeping to the writings of the Fathers up to the
seventh century, and practically closing with St. John
of Damascus in the eighth, while the theological movement of the West began in the ninth, culminated with
the scholasticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and then again in the sixteenth and seventeenth
had to encounter its great adversary, the Protestant
doctrine and theology.  Even in the twelfth century,
although there were many points in dispute between
Rome and Constantinople, it was still the prevalent
view that there was but one great universal Church,
embracing East and West alike. The national hatred
was great, but neither side dared to say this, " We alone
are the Catholic Church, and you are excommunicated,
apostate, heretical." Both sides appealed to the first
seven or eight (Ecumenical Councils and their decrees,
and held that fresh decisions binding the universal
Church could only be enacted at such another Synod
representing both East and West.  And that is still
the belief in the East and in Russia.  With this is
connected the patriarchal theory, that there are five
Presidents of the whole Church, four in the East and
one in the West, namely, the Pope, to whom belongs the
first rank, but no power or dominion over the rest. But




Division of East and West.           5 
since the Pope has separated himself from the communion of the rest, and put forward inadmissible claims to
dominion, his place has been taken by the later Patriarchate of Moscow, and since 1720 by the Governing
Synod of St. Petersburg which superseded it; and if
any controversy concerning the whole Church required
settlement, it would be referred to the four Oriental
patriarchs, and decided by their unanimous verdict.
Thus it was that before 1854 the doctrinal differences between East and West were very slight, but the
differences in Church constitution, ritual, and worship
were considerable.
The insertion of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed is
an offence to the Orientals, who say that the Latin
Church alone had no right to make it, and that this
ancient symbol must be maintained in the precise form
fixed by the (Ecumenical Councils. The Popes allowed
it to remain without the addition in the (Uniate)
Eastern Churches.  So again with Purgatory.  All
Oriental Churches rejected the notion of a purifying
fire after death, and at the Council of Florence the Pope
and his theologians consented to its being abandoned or
left an open question, and the doctrine of the Church
confined to the permission or recommendation of prayer




52              Reunion of the Churches.
for the dead.l No objection was ever made to the use
of the chalice in the East, though the Popes persistently
refused it to Western nations, or withdrew it after being
once conceded, at the cost of rivers of blood and of
the strengthening and extension of Protestantism. So
again  with  the  marriage  of priests.   The  universal
custom of Russia and the East, that every secular priest
should marry before ordination, was never assailed by
the Popes, nor did they ever require the introduction of
celibacy.  It was out of regard for the Greek  Church
that at the  Council of Trent no  condemnation  was
pronounced on divorce for adultery, as an error, and the
Council contented itself with vindicating the opposite
practice of the Latin Church.2
As regards Baptism, which the Orientals perform by
1 [This is all that is taught authoritatively now. The Council of Trent
(Sess. xxv.) simply defines " Purgatorium  esse, animasque ibi detentas
fidelium suffragiis, potissimum vero acceptabili altaris sacrificio juvari,"
and forbids preachers to deal with subtle and difficult questions, which
tend rather to curiosity and superstition than to edification. Perrone, the
Jesuit Professor at the Roman College for the last thirty years, says
accordingly, " Duo tantum ab Ecclesig de Purgatorio definita sunt, ejusdem scilicet existentia, et suffragiorum utilitas erga defunctorum animas.
Omnia proinde quae ad locum, tempus, pcenarum naturam et acerbitatem
spectant, dogma non attingunt; prout nec attingunt quae ad modum pertinent, quo defunctorum animae suffragiis fidelium adjuvantur."-Proelect.
Theol. Parisiis, 1854, vol. i. pp. 478, 9. The Greek Synod of Bethlehem,
held in 1672, on this, as on other points, virtually indorsed the teaching
of Trent.]
2 [Divorce a vinculo is not however allowed among the Uniates.]




Division of East and West.            53
immersion, while throughout the West, both Catholic
and Protestant, affusion only is used, in Constantinople it was for some time the custom to reject Western
baptism  and rebaptize converts.  In Russia, also, a
Synod held in 1620, under the Patriarch Philaret, prescribed this rebaptism, but the Philaret of our own day
observes that it was an order not to be justified by the
doctrine of the Church, but excusable on account of
the crimes of the age.' Latterly Constantinople has
followed the advice of St. Petersburg, and abandoned
the practice of rebaptizing, thereby  admitting the
validity of Western baptism.
Even the official language of Rome used to speak not
of heresy but only of schism, which had come to be
termed the Photian Schism-an unhistorical designation, for Photius, who came forward in the ninth century as the accuser of Rome and the West, did not
effect any separation, and the mutual recognition and
intercommunion of the Churches lasted two centuries
longer. Indeed, as late as 1583, Pope Gregory xiII.
addressed a friendly letter to Jeremiah, Patriarch of
Constantinople, calling him  his "venerable brother,"
and breathing no syllable about subjection or recanta1 Philaret's GeschichteRusslands, trans. byBlumenthal, 1872, vol. ii. p. 98.




54           Reunion of the Churches.
tion of any doctrine, but only begging him to exert his
authority for the reception of the new calendar in the
East.l  And the ecclesiastical acts of the separated
Eastern Bishops and Priests have been acknowledged
as valid in the West on the ground of their episcopal
succession and ordination, as was distinctly shown at
the Council of Florence, where neither the Pope nor
his theologians maintained that they had lost their
jurisdiction (or power of absolution) through separation from Rome.
The great stumblingblock and real hindrance to any
understanding in the eyes of all Easterns is the Papacy,
in the form  which it has assumed according to the
ultramontane theory, since the time of Gregory vii., of
an absolute spiritual and temporal dominion over the
whole Christian world.  Both Latins and Greeks said
as much in the middle ages, and it is still openly
avowed in our own day, as well by converts as by
Russians and Greeks themselves.2  And now, through
recent occurrences, every hope of reconciliation and
future reunion has been purposely cut up by the roots.
The present Pope has within the last few years imposed
i See Theiner's Die Staatskirche Russlands, 1853, p. 47.
2 Cf. e.g. Prince Augustine Galizin's L'Eglise Grceco-Russe, Paris, 1861,
p. 59.




Division of East and West.                  55
three new articles of faith-the Immaculate Conception,
his Universal Episcopate, and his Infallibility. None
of his predecessors for 1800 years, with one solitary
exception, has done anything of the kind, and that one,
Boniface viii., contented himself with a single dogma,
and did not succeed in securing the acceptance of that.l
The whole traditions of the Eastern Church, its canon
law and patristic literature, contain nothing in support
of these doctrines, or capable of being brought into
harmony with them.  The forgeries employed to persuade  the  Greeks to  accept them   have long  since
been seen through and exposed.
In Rome the mind and temper of the Greeks and
Russians was perfectly well understood. It was known
that on  their principles this attempt to  make new
dogmas could only be regarded as a crime and a blasphemy.  The division  can  no longer, as before, be
called a mere separation or schism; the whole Eastern
and  Russian  Church, with  its seventy-five millions,
must now  be declared heretical, and the Curia and
1 [The author refers to the Bull Unam Sanctam, issued in 1302, defining
that the spiritual and temporal swords are equally committed by God to
the Roman Pontiff, and that it is absolutely essential to salvation for every
human being to be subject to him. The Bull was publicly burnt at Paris,
and Philip the Fair appealed to a future General Council. It was virtually
withdrawn by Clement v.]




56          Reunion of the Churches.
Jesuits must admit all the consequences that follow
from that declaration. To speak any longer of hopes
of a future union would border on madness. We can
but assume that this was deliberately intended at Rome
-entire separation for ever and for all eternity.  But
man proposes and God disposes.
The Russian people-viz., the thinking and active
portion of them, who form  public opinion-believe
that two great tasks lie before them, one in Europe,
the other in Asia.  The latter is the strengthening
and maintenance of Christianity, everywhere in Asia
oppressed by Islam, and the restoration of a great
Asiatic Eastern Church. The Privy Councillor Mouravieff, a member of the Governing Synod, refers to this
point when he says:-" We are thoroughly convinced
that the famous Oriental Sees will recover their ancient
splendour."' Indeed, the system of the Russian and
the whole Eastern Church requires that the three
ancient Patriarchs. of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, should again become in fact what they were
formerly, and not be mere assessors of the Patriarch of Constantinople.  In Europe it is the idea
of Panslavism  which shapes the thought of young
1 Question Religieuse d'Orient et d'Occident, p. 97.




Division of East and West.           57
Russia, the ruling and acting Russia of the future.
And not there only, but throughout Eastern Europe,
this notion or hope is strongly leavening the popular
mind, into which it sinks deeper every day. Yet the
object aimed at, whether it be the moral or political
union of all Slavonic peoples, or of the ten principal
cognate races, which comprise together some eighty
millions, has no historical basis, and has never before
found expression or sympathy. For the first time,
in our own day, some Bohemian scholars, who had
advanced from  linguistic to historical investigations,
discovered that all these nationalities united by a common primitive language sprung from a common stock.
It was a natural inference from this in Russia, that the
Russian nation itself, comprising fifty-four millions of
the eighty million Slaves, was called to the hegemony
of the race. When the question is regarded from an
ecclesiastical point of view, we find that over two-thirds,
or fifty-six millions, of the Slaves belong to the Greek
Church, nineteen millions to the Roman Catholic, three
millions to the Uniate, and about a million and a half
are Protestants. And thus the Panslavist idea naturally points to the formation of a great united Slavonic
Church, in which seventy-eight million Slaves might be




58          Reunion of the Churches.
religiously welded together through a union of Latins
and Easterns. Even now, a letter of the Czech historian and leader, Palacky, to the Russian spokesman
of Panslavism, Pogodin, is going the round of the
daily papers.' Palacky salutes him as "the reawakener
and apostle of the happy idea of Slavonic national
union," and adds, "Praise and thanks to the allmerciful God, who has blessed your labours and mine.
The Slavonic national spirit has waked up from the
slumber of centuries; the sentiment of common fellowship is constantly gaining ground in all Slavonic
countries. The ultimate triumph of the cause we, who
are both old, may leave with confidence to the rising
generation." That younger generation will soon discover, if it has not discovered already, that, with the
mass of the people, no community of mind and sentiment, such as is aimed at, is possible without an union
of Churches. The Czechs may consult the Russians
about that.
Since the time of Alexander ii. a powerful movement has penetrated the Russian Church. It feels
itself to be the chief representative and leader of the
Eastern Church, so venerable for its age, its unbroken
1 See Wiener Neue Freie Presse, 10 Feb. 1872.




Division of East and West.           59
succession, and its immutability. Even the independent Church of the kingdom of Greece is stirring, and
in the South and Russian North alike an ecclesiastical
literature is rapidly growing up. Foreign, and especially German literature, is read and studied. Several
young men in Greece have received their theological
training at German universities. And at the same
time energetic efforts are being made in the Russian
Church to secure the reforms which are urgently needed.
It is perceived that the whole position of the clergy, the
feud between the white and black clergy-the seculars
and parish priests on one side, and the monks and
bishops, who are taken from their ranks, on the other
-and the want of preaching and popular instruction,
are matters requiring radical change. This is not only
felt but openly asserted; and those who remember the
days of the Emperor Nicholas cannot but be astonished
at the advances made since then. And this Church is
able to correct any past mistake or error, as has been
done in the case of rebaptism, even should it affect
the decree of a Council. She is not compelled by her
principles, on the ground of any fancied infallibility,
always to drag her errors after her like a ball fastened
to her heel. And accordingly there is ground for the
fairest hopes in that quarter of the Christian world.




LECTURE IV.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION.
rT HERE  are not many years in the world's history
where two eventful pages come so close together
as on March 16 and November 1, 1517.  On the former
day the fifth Lateran Council at Rome was closed after
several years' session, and thereby the last hope of
any reform of the Church from above was laid in the
grave. That assembly of Italian bishops had but one
object, to extend the power of the Pope, and make any
independent reforming Council, like the Council of
Basle, impossible for the future.' Seven months later
Luther's theses were posted up at Wittemberg, and the
contest began which, after 350 years, is still unfinished.
1 [The fifth Lateran Synod was opened by Julius ii. in 1512, and dissolved in 1517 by Leo x. It consisted of some fifty or sixty Italian bishops
only, and has never been received as cecumenical, nor did even ultramontane writers, till quite lately, venture to affirm its cecumenicity with any
confidence; Bellarmine and Muzzarelli, e.g. speak very doubtfully. Its
principal achievements were the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, and
the assertion, in the Bull Pastor zEternus, of the superiority of Popes to
Councils, in direct contradiction to the famous decrees of Constance.]
60




The German Reformation.            61
The Reformation was a movement so deeply rooted
in the needs of the age, and sprang so inevitably from
the ecclesiastical conditions of the centuries immediately preceding, that it took possession of all the nations
of the West in turn. So powerfully did it sway men's
minds in Italy, the native home of the Papacy, that
Paul IV. declared the Inquisition, with its dungeons and
blazing pyres, to be the only sure and firm support of
the Papacy there. In Italy and Spain, however, it was
found possible to crush the movement, though only at
a frightful sacrifice of human life; but in Germany it
sank so deep into the heart of the nation that even such
a tribunal as the Spanish Inquisition would have failed
to achieve the task.
This force and strength of the Reformation was only
in part due to the personality of the man who was its
author and spokesman in Germany. It was Luther's
overpowering greatness and wonderful many-sidedness of
mind that made him the man of his age and his people.
Nor was there ever a German who had such an intuitive knowledge of his countrymen, and was again so completely possessed, not to say absorbed, by the national
sentiment, as the Augustinian monk of Wittemberg.
The mind and spirit of the Germans was in his hand




62          Reunion of the Churches.
what the lyre is in the hand of a skilled musician. He
had given them more than any man in Christian days
ever gave his people-language, popular manuals of
instruction, Bibles, hymnology.  All his opponents
could offer in place of it, and all the reply they could
make to him, was insipid, colourless, and feeble, by the
side of his transporting eloquence. They stammered;
he spoke. He alone has impressed the indelible stamp
of his mind on the German language and the German
intellect, and even those among us who hold him in
religious detestation, as the great heresiarch and seducer
of the nation, are constrained, in spite of themselves, to
speak with his words and think with his thoughts.
And yet still more powerful than this Titan of the
world of mind was the yearning of the German people
for deliverance from the bonds of a corrupted Church
system. Had no Luther arisen Germany would not
have remained Catholic. We may gather that from the
enthusiastic sympathy, especially in South Germany,
for the doctrine of the Anabaptists. This doctrine,
which emanated from the lowest ranks, was zealously
attacked by the whole body of theologians. It was
essentially distinguished from Luther's teaching, whose
favourite dogma of justification by faith alone it re



The German Reformalion.              63
jected. But many laid down their lives for this form
of belief, and if the princes had not hastily combined to
strangle the movement, which was not only religious,
but political and social, in the blood of its adherents,
Germany would probably have been divided, not, as
afterwards happened, between Lutherans and Zwinglians, but between Anabaptists and Lutherans.  For
the Reformed (Zwinglian) doctrine was never popular
in Germany; it was a mere exotic growth, artificially
fostered by the princes, and was generally only endured
under compulsion.
Luther had one very powerful ally besides the national
sympathy, and that was the Court of Rome itself. Had
the Curia been advised by an astute disciple of the
German Reformer, he could hardly have given counsel
more efficient or more profitable to his master than
what was actually followed. At the first moment,
the official theologian of the Curia, Sylvester Prierio,
Master of the Sacred Palace, met Luther's appeal to the
Bible with the assertion that the force and authority of
Holy Scripture is derived entirely from the Pope. To
censure anything done by Rome was heresy. Then,
again, Leo x.'s Bull against Luther condemned as errors
such universally familiar truths as that the best penance




64           Reunion of the Churches.
is reformation of life, and that it is against the charity
of the Holy Ghost to burn heretics. If the indulgencepreachers told men that as soon as the money chinks in
the chest the soul flies out of Purgatory, they preached
to deaf ears.
But if Luther and the other Reformers painted in
the darkest colours the deep corruption in the Church,
the wretched management of ecclesiastical affairs, the
crimes of the clergy, and the  unspeakable misery
of the people, so utterly neglected, deceived, and plundered by their pastors, all this was fully admitted
on the other side.  And more than  this too: the
Popes themselves could not deny-for it was too
notorious-that Rome itself was the seat and source
of corruption, and the Popes its authors and disseminators.  Adrian vi. had it openly proclaimed at the
Diet of Nuremberg in 1522, that everything in the
Church had been perverted, and a disease had spread
from  the head to the members, from  the Popes to
the rest of the rulers of the Church.l  And what
Adrian proclaimed in general, in accents of penitence,
the Germans read in detail twelve years later in the
1 [Adrian vi., a Netherlander, who succeeded Leo x. in 1522, was a man
of deep piety, but he reigned only one year. He was the last non-Italian
Pope.]




The German Reformation.                      65
famous memorial drawn up at the command of Paul II.
by nine Roman prelates, including Caraffa, afterwards
Paul iv., where  the  theory  invented  by  sycophants
of the Pope's absolute dominion over the whole Church
was characterized as the source of all this corruption.1 One member of the Commission, Cardinal Contarini, who was afterwards papal legate in Germany,
expressly  maintained  the  impiety  of this  doctrine,
which made the Pope absolute lord and master of the
whole  Church, and  defended  Luther's work  on  the
Babylonish Captivity, where the doctrine of Christian
liberty is opposed to this tyrannical doctrine.
What was communicated to the Emperor Charles v.
as the  wish  and  advice  of the  Pope, was  mainly
comprised  in  the  request to  put down the  German
movement by force of arms.  The Legate  Campeggio
represented in 1530 that capital punishment and the
establishment of the Inquisition in all German countries
1 [Paul III. commenced his reign by summoning several distinguished
men of reforming tendencies and devout life into the Sacred College,
among whom were Contarini, Pole, Sadolet, Caraffa, and Giberto; and
they were encouraged to speak their opinions freely. See Ranke's Popes,
vol. i. pp. 98 sqq. It was, however, through Caraffa's influence, who
distrusted all gentler means of gaining over the Protestants, aided by the
advice of Ignatius Loyola, that the Roman Inquisition was established in
1542, and he became one of the first and severest Grand Inquisitors. lb.
pp. 141 sqq.]
E




66          Reunion of the Churches.
would be the best remedy.l  And when at last the
Emperor took up arms, Paul III. sent an auxiliary force
commanded by his nephews.  And thus the feeling of
hatred against Rome was so universal, that Marcellus II.,
when legate in Germany, wrote to Rome that nothing
so filled him  with fear and horror as the intense
exasperation of a whole nation, which he everywhere
encountered.2  Even a Jesuit living in Rome, John
Faure, in 1750 felt obliged to acknowledge that the
principal and indeed only cause of the separation of
the Northern nations was, not at all their love for
Lutheran and Calvinist doctrines, but their hatred of
the Pope and  Court of Rome, and this hatred was
increased by the profligacy, pride, domineering, and
covetousness of the clergy, especially of the religious
orders.3
This too was remarkable and hard to explain, that
after the famous Bull issued by Leo x. in 1520 against
the earliest publications of Luther, the Popes refrained
from  any further dogmatic pronouncements.  Europe
was in a state of the extremest excitement, and the
1 So thought Clement vII. according to Cardinal Loaysa. See Cartas
al Emperador Carlos V. por su Confesor. Heine, Berlin, 1848.
2 Cf. Anecdota Romana.
3 Commentarium in Bullam Pauli III., 1750, p. 139.




The German Reformation.             67
whole religious edifice seemed tottering to its fall. The
most discordant doctrines, in sharp antagonism to all
previous teaching, were forcing their way to the front;
never had there been a period in all Christian history
when the perplexity of men's minds was so great, and
the people left to themselves so utterly helpless, as in
the forty-three years from 1520 to 1563. Yet the Popes,
according to the latest theory the sole infallible teachers
of mankind, kept silence.  Not a  single doctrinal.Bull of that whole period exists; one whole generation
was suffered to grow  up in Europe, and another to
pass to its grave, without knowing what the infallible
chair in Rome bade them believe on the gravest religious questions. German Bishops, like Faber in Vienna,
made the most moving representations.  The whole
generation, he said, whose birth or youth coincided with
the time of the great controversy, knew not what was
the true religion, and if this continued men would
become thoroughly godless and atheistical. As late as
1530 he wrote to the Pope that, if even then he would
undertake the correction of abuses, there was great
hope that all Germany, and indeed the whole Church,
would be brought back to its earlier condition of
1 Raynaldus, Annal. Eccl. ann. 1536, p. 70.




68          Reunion of the Churches.
peaceful orthodoxy.l But all was in vain. The Popes
persisted in their policy of silence, and of putting every
obstacle in the way of the Council so anxiously looked for,
until it was too late for its decrees to make the slightest
impression on a generation that had been thoroughly
imbued with Protestant views from childhood.
And the German Church? Where was it then, and
how did it help itself? The Germans had still indeed
a political unity-the Empire, with the Emperor and the
Imperial Diet; and they had Bishops and dioceses. But
there was wanting a higher organization of common life,
-in a word, a German national Church. For centuries
no German Council had been held, nor anything done
to remedy even the grossest and most crying abuses.
In truth, such a Council was hardly possible, and it is a
significant fact that during the whole forty years of the
Reformation contest, neither the German episcopate,
nor even any considerable portion of it, made a single
attempt to take counsel in Synod on the religious situation and the common measures to be adopted. There
is scarcely a parallel case in all Church history, but it
is explained by their conscious impotence. For since
the dismemberment of the entire Church system through
1 Raynald. Annal. Eec. ann. 1536, p. 54.




The German Reformation.              69
the Popes, the German Church lay on the ground like
a helpless and motionless giant with fettered limbs.
The whole conduct of the Popes from Clement vII.
downwards, in regard to the constantly renewed petitions and requirements of the Emperor, the sovereigns,
and the nations, as recent discoveries have revealed it to
us, was one long series of evasions, intrigues, and falsehoods. Pius iv. himself declared without hesitation to
the Venetian ambassador, that his predecessors had
professed to wish for a Council, but had not really
desired it. And he added, that if he wished after their
example to give the mere appearance of a Council, he
could keep the world occupied for three or four years
at least with the question of when it should meet.l
Many may find it incomprehensible how, at a time
when one nation after another was being swept into
the movement, the authorities at Rome should have
obstinately persisted in refusing what they must have
themselves acknowledged to be just and right; but
three causes conspired to produce this result. The first
was the powerful and compact resistance of the whole
entourage of a Pope and his court, which profited by the
abuses. The second cause lay in the diminution of
1 Cf. Reimarus, Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, pp. 594, 602.




70          Reunion of the Churches.
power which any reform must inevitably involve. For
the development of the papal system, with its centralized bureaucracy and plenary power to meddle in
everything, had sunk the Church in such deep degradation that every removal of an abuse, every improvement
in doctrine and discipline, would have been also a
lessening or limitation of papal power.  Lastly and
chiefly, it was the supreme principle and soul of the
whole Roman system  of ecclesiastical administration
that made the Papacy hostile to all reform-the principle, namely, that a claim once preferred could never
be abandoned, an error or injustice never publicly confessed, and therefore never remedied. Authority must
remain inviolate, and can never be sufficiently exalted.
This was pre-eminently the principle of the new Order
of Jesuits, which now came to the assistance of the
Papacy in its sore need. And this soon appeared in
the great question of the use of the chalice, which the
sovereigns, who in other respects were entirely opposed
to Protestantism, were now urging, because they saw no
other way of retaining their subjects in the ancient
Church. But the Jesuits, Canisius especially, carried
the day by insisting that the point at issue was the
authority of the Church, meaning that of the Pope, for




The German Reformation.              7I
which alone they cared. If any concession was made,
how was the earlier conduct of the Popes to be excused,
with the bloody wars and countless holocausts of human
victims it had cost?1
When we look closely into the circumstances of Germany during the period from 1520 to 1568, we perceive
how the resistance of the old Catholic element became
constantly feebler and the number of Catholics more
limited, till at last the Protestant belief, like a mighty
stream, swept everything before it. In a former work
I have taken pains to discover all the German scholars
who still adhered to the ancient Church, or would
gladly have remained loyal to it, but it was a mere
handful. In the reports of papal nuncios during thirty
years we read that there were still many so-called
"Expectants," who wished to remain undecided till a
true Council pointed out to them the right way. We
read how these nuncios were adjured and implored with
tears by the highest personages, by princes, to impress
on the conscience of the Pope the urgent necessity of
at once convoking an CEcumenical or a German Council
as the' only available means of saving the Church.
But, generally speaking, all the learning and culture
1 Cf. Canisii Vita, p. 199.




72          Reunion of the Churches.
gravitated to the Protestant side, especially the influential class of schoolmasters and humanists, and even
the clergy. These last were still very numerous at the
beginning of the movement, for the German Church was
the wealthiest in the world. The endowed benefices
were numberless; even small towns had from thirty
to forty priests, besides convents and monks, and we see
these clergy going over in shoals to the Reformation,
or succumbing without; the slightest resistance to the
introduction of Protestantism. In those countries and
cities where the new religion had been imposed by the
civil authority or the magistrates, the Catholic clergy
did not depart, as they easily might have done, but
stayed where they were, partly in voluntary partly in
involuntary subjection. Even the dissolution of the
monasteries only converted the monks into Protestant
preachers, or followers of some secular calling. And
yet in South Germany there were hundreds of unoccupied parishes and empty monasteries, where the
priests and monks ejected by the Reformation would
have been gladly welcomed and cared for, had they
come. And this too at a time when all over Europe,
in France, England, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain,
fagots were blazing, and men preferred a fiery death to
denying their faith.




The German Reformation.              73
In 1557 the Venetian ambassador, Badoero, who was
well informed, reported that seven-tenths of the German nation had  become Lutheran, and two-tenths
belonged to other sects-the Reformed and Anabaptist,
— while only one-tenth remained Catholic. The greater
part of Austria and Bohemia was Protestant, and in
Bavaria, the nobility, and the Emperor Maximilian II.
himself, though he continued nominally Catholic, were
of the same religion. But since the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, half
Germany has gradually become Catholic again. This
happened partly through the internal division of the
Protestants and the litigious spirit of their divines,
which produced disgust and painful uncertainty among
the people, and led many to look on the rigid system
of authority and uniformity of the ancient Church as
preferable. But it was chiefly by the oppression and
banishment of the Protestant ministers, the forced
emigration of those who adhered to their faith, the
destruction of Protestant Bibles, catechisms, and hymnbooks, and generally the employment of all those
means of coercion which the Jesuits had reduced to
a system, that the so-called counter-Reformation in
Austria and Bavaria and the ecclesiastical principalities
was brought about.




74          Reunion of the Churches.
But the notion of a permanent separation from the
ancient Church had not occurred to the generation
of the Reformation era in Germany. It was only a
reformation that was demanded; it had been longed for
and demanded for centuries before. The old dwellinghouse was thought to require repairing and cleansing, but
there was no intention of pulling it down and building
a new one in its place. The idea of two rival Churches
in Germany arrayed in permanent hostility against each
other shocked the mind. All diets and religious conferences of the day were conducted on the assumption
that the adherents of the new and the old religion were
still members of one universal Church, and that a
common understanding could and ought to be arrived
at, and communion of worship restored. Even when
the Augsburg religious treaty of 1555 established a
legal and political separation, the Estates of the Empire
consoled themselves and the nation with the hope of
a future Council; and as that could not be at once
obtained, they thought another religious conference
should be tried, when, as was said, "the truth would be
brought to light." Two years later this conference was
opened without any result at Worms. But still for a
long time the separation continued to be regarded as a




The German Reformation.                 75
temporary and provisional state of things, although it
seemed as if the Tridentine decrees on the one side, and
the Formulary of Concord' on the other, in their sharp
antithesis must exclude all hope. Yet a century after
the separation the hope of a future union was still
clung to in the Articles of the Westphalian Peace, and
the boundary-lines were fixed only until, "by the grace
of God," a friendly settlement of the religious controversies was attained.2
With the year 1560, at the end of the reign of the
Emperor Ferdinand I., a revolution began to work in
Germany, and generally both in the Catholic and the
Protestant camp, which could not fail to make even any
approach to friendly negotiations more difficult, and
seemed destined to make the breach perpetual. Among
the German Protestants the long series of internal
controversies  was  decided  in  a  strictly  Lutheran
sense, and the building up of the Lutheran dogmatic
system followed,-a theological codification studiously
sharpening all the  points of divergence from  the
ancient Church.  It was based on the Formulary of
Concord, which  was' not a  common  symbol like
1 [The Formula Concordice was established in 1577, after Luther's death,
as the final and formal standard of Lutheran doctrine.]
2 Cf. Instrum. Pacis Westphal. v. 14, 25, 31, 48.




76          Reunion of the Churches.
the Augsburg Confession, but a theological code which
the princes enforced by all the means of compulsion at their command.  Thenceforward all attempts
at peace and re-union necessarily ceased. Still more
fatal was the change which took place in the Catholic
Church, coinciding with the latter period of the Council
of Trent and the rise of the Jesuit Order.  Hitherto,
since 1540, and partly before, there had been a considerable body of learned men in the Church, who
were attached indeed to the Catholic doctrine and
communion, but at the same time recommended radical
reforms and a return to the earlier and purer system
of the Church, and were accordingly in favour of
making great concessions to the Protestant party. Such
had been, in Germany, Erasmus and his friends, and
then Witzel, Staphylus, Cassander, Wild (or Ferus), and,
in France, d'Espense, Gentien, Hervet, the Chancellor
l'Hopital, and others. The gentle Emperor Ferdinand I.
was substantially of the same mind, differing therein
from his brother Charles v., who took the Spanish view,
and only saw  in all the movements of the age a
heresy to be rooted out with fire and sword. Ferdinand and his son Maximilian II. still hoped for a
reconciliation. Ferdinand procured the drawing up of




The German Reformation.              77
the eirenical memorials of Cassander and Witzel, and
for a long time demanded more searching reforms from
the Council of Trent. He did not obtain them, and
at last agreed, though reluctantly, to the Council being
closed without having satisfied even the most moderate
requirements of Church reform.
The writings of Witzel and Cassander on one side,
and the opinions and influence of the contemporary
Jesuits, Laynez, Salmeron, and Canisius, on the other,
reveal the wide chasm  which was on the point of
opening within the Catholic Church.   The former
started from the principle that, to use Cassander's
words addressed to the Emperor Ferdinand, the view
and judgment of the ancient Church must be investigated, in order that, as far as possible, the present
Church, which was descended from it, might be restored
to the form it assumed in its free development after
Constantine, at the period  of the first Councils.
Cassander adds that the authority of this ancient
Church is so fully recognised, that both sides, even
those who are wont to appeal to Scripture only, appeal
to its verdict.  The Jesuits devoted themselves to
enforcing the opposite view. According to their representation the Church is a great all-embracing Empire,




78         Reunion of the Churches.
an absolute monarchy, ruled with irresponsible and
plenary power by one man, the Pope. To him all alike,
layman and cleric, king and beggar, are equally and
absolutely subject. No one has any rights before him,
and all authority in the Church is an emanation from
his-a mere deputed power that may at any moment
be recalled. This papal kingdom must be upheld and
extended by all means of compulsion and violence, and
punishments of life and limb, sometimes directly inflicted, sometimes by invoking the secular arm, which is
bound at once to execute its sentence. To make any
sort of concession to the rebellious and disobedient
would be simply to put a premium on rebellion. Moreover, the Papacy requires large revenues and constant
influx of money from the whole world, partly on account
of the enormous expenses involved in the administration of a kingdom of 200 millions descending into the
minutest details, partly that it may be able to reward
liberally its numerous ministers and instruments. And
therefore all reforms calculated in any way to diminish
the papal income are for that reason, if for no other,
inadmissible.
There could not, of course, but be bitter enmity
between the reforming school of Catholic theologians




The German Reformation.                79
and the Jesuits, and Witzel said with good reason, "We
are the object of their fiercest enmity, because they
wish to preserve the present deformed condition of the
Church, and, according to the principles of their Order,
will allow no improvement." 1 The leading men of this
party soon died off, and those who inherited their ideas
had to keep silence and conceal themselves, for the
Jesuits in a rapid course of victory gained possession of
the Catholic high schools and gymnasia, and became
confessors and directors of conscience at the Courts,
and who then would have dared in Catholic Germany
to disown their rule or breathe a single notion displeasing to them? Moreover, every work which suggested any concessions at all being made to the adherents of the Reformation was promptly condemned at
Rome, and every such opinion compromised the author's
safety.  And thus on both such sides any approximation seemed impossible.   In all the domains of
Catholic princes Protestant worship was suppressed,
under Jesuit dictation; it was the professed aim of the
Order to undermine the treaty of Augsburg.  Everything was rapidly tending to the Thirty Years' War.
1 See his letters to Cassander in 1565, shortly before his death, in Illusrium et Clarorum Virorum Epistoloe, Batav. 1617, p. 280.




80          Reunion of the Churches.
Here I must refer to a peculiar difficulty which
stands in the way of any approximation or friendly
understanding between the German Protestant Church
and one of the ancient Churches. I mean the interruption of ecclesiastical succession, the abolition of the
episcopate and  episcopal ordination  of Presbyters.
There was no external necessity for Luther and his
colleagues to do this, for some of the Catholic bishops
had early come over to their side. But they thought
that, as in the New Testament the words bishop and
presbyter are used interchangeably, and the two offices
were not at first distinguished, the episcopate must be
regarded as a mere later and human institution. But
with it much more too was lost, more than at first sight
they themselves comprehended; the link which attached
them to the old apostolic Church was severed, and the
bridge broken down by means of which communion or
mutual exercise of influence between the two bodies
might have been maintained or reopened.  This appeared also in their relation to the English Church,
which had equally issued from the Reformation, but
had retained the episcopate, and with it the succession
and ordination. Consequently, any German Protestant
minister who wished to enter its service had first to




The German Reformation.             81
undergo episcopal ordination, whereas a Latin or Greek
priest coming over to its communion is received at once
by virtue of his former orders, the validity of which is
acknowledged. And on episcopal ordination depends
the consecration of the Holy Eucharist and absolution.
And all this was sacrificed on the strength of a doubtful
interpretation of Scripture, for not a few Protestant
theologians held that the episcopate was instituted by
the Apostles, though in the later apostolic age; and
all must allow that the whole history of the Church
from  the death of the Apostles exhibits a settled
episcopate existing everywhere, and indeed is completely shaped by it.
Two distinguished philosophers, Leibnitz and the
Court preacher Jablonski, about 1701, when Prussia
became a kingdom, perceived the gravity of the false
position into which the German Reformed Church had
brought herself, and busied themselves with considering
how the defect might be remedied. Leibnitz thought
it would have been better if the Reformers had not
broken the "linea ordinationis" (the succession) legitimately preserved in ancient Christendom, and the
bishops had retained their former position, and priests
F




82          Reunion of the Churches.
been ordained by bishops, as before.' Jablonski took
a similar view. He thought the episcopate had been
abolished in order to outrage the Roman Church as
much as possible, whereby also all the Eastern Churches,
the English, and all Christian antiquity, was set at
nought.  And he added that its restoration was the
more to be wished, because it almost seemed as though
in separating from the Roman Church they had separated from the universal Church also; but he did not
deny that there were great difficulties in the way of
such a restoration, which could only be overcome " by
a large measure of heroic spirit." 2
Both representations were addressed to the King of
Prussia, and Frederick I. actually, on assuming the royal
title, had two preachers, Ursinus and Sander, consecrated bishops by the English Church, but with their
death this episcopate again became extinct.  In our
own days Frederick-William  Iv. again took up the
subject, and this was one of his reasons for urging
the establishment of a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem.  Here a bishop of the English Church was to
impart ordination to German clergymen; and in the
1 See Joh. Esth. Kapfen's Einige Vertrauten Briefe, Leipzig, 1745,
p. 250.               2 Cf. Henke's Magazin, 1795. No. 222.




The German Reformation.              83
King's instructions occur the words, which have evidently been carefully chosen, that "he offers his hand
with full confidence to the episcopal Church of England, which unites with evangelical principles an historical constitution and ecclesiastical independence
aiming at universality." This is a gentle but perfectly
intelligible expression of the feeling that his own
Church was too much isolated and alienated from
the great ancient communions; and it is in fact well
known that he was dissatisfied with his "sovereign
episcopate," and would gladly have intrusted the guidance of the Church to fitter hands, meaning thereby an
episcopal constitution.




LECTURE V.
REACTION TOWARDS UNION ON THE CONTINENT IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
THE Germans displayed a quite remarkable patience
in attempting for nearly a century to heal the
religious schism by means of public conferences, the
latest of which took place in 1601 at Ratisbon, and
1618 at Prague. But this only resulted in scholastic
disputations, in which everything turned on dialectical
skill and promptness, and the one point aimed at was
to perplex the adversary and involve him in a contradiction. The upshot, as a rule, was simply to widen
the chasm, and increase mutual bitterness, without any
real gain to either side. And that always will be the
result when each party starts with the conviction of its
own absolute perfection, and seeks nothing but victory
and the conversion of opponents to its own views.
In the period succeeding the Thirty Years' War, many
84




Reaction of Seventeenth Century.        85
members of the Lutheran Church felt uncomfortable
and dissatisfied with their position. There was something oppressive and humiliating in the yoke of civil
domination over the Church, and its entire dependence
on secular princes and their theological advisers. It
is true that the scandalous and violent changes of
the religion of whole countries, such as took place in
the Palatinate, in Anhalt, and elsewhere, ceased after
the Westphalian Peace, and the religious changes of
sovereigns affected themselves only.  But still the
whole Church system remained in the hands of Consistories, under royal control. And to this must be
added the theological ossification and narrow rigidity
of the doctrines which had to be maintained according
to the Formulary of Concord.  From these causes
sprang a double reaction, among the laity and the
theologians. The lay reaction manifested itself partly
in the growing frequency of conversions to Catholicism;
many felt the authority of Popes and Councils to be
preferable to that of a secular prince. On the other
hand, the whole religious literature of the laity, from
the seventeenth to far into the eighteenth century, is
penetrated with a profound dissatisfaction at the condition of the system and prevalent teaching of the




86          Reunion of the Churches.
Protestant Church.   The theological reaction  was
chiefly developed in the writings and school of George
Calixtus, as represented  at the two universities of
Helmstadt and Kinigsberg.  Calixtus insisted on the
authority of ecclesiastical tradition, rightly understood,
viz., the consentient teaching of the first five centuries,
being recognised as well as the scriptural evidence of
doctrine.  And thus he approximated to the ancient
Churches, both Eastern and Latin, and evoked the most
vigorous opposition. His view, which is now shared by
so many of the very best men, that the three particular
Churches should not regard themselves as faultless and
incapable of improvement, found no acceptance then on
either side.
Meanwhile, towards the end of the seventeenth
century the number of converts to the Catholic Church
increased. Queen Christina, the talented and accomplished daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, resigned the
Swedish throne to embrace Catholicism, in order to
take refuge in the ship of ecclesiastical authority from
the ocean of philosophical doubt. Still more remarkable
was the conversion of the learned Landgrave of HesseRhineland, who, after twenty years' experience, wrote a
book full of well-meant but unsparing exposure of the




Reaction of Seventeenth Century.        87
abuses he had discovered in the Church of his choice.
The motives of several other conversions of princes and
princesses about the same period were less disinterested.
Further influences co-operated to produce in thinking
Protestants a longing, if not for the Catholic Church,
for the appropriation of its prerogatives. The Netherlander, Hugo Grotius, who was celebrated throughout
Europe as an acute and many-sided scholar, had in his
widely circulated writings insisted far more strongly
than Calixtus on the profound and excessive divergence
of Protestantism from the Church of the early centuries,
and the necessity of either seeking a reunion with the
ancient Church, or at least restoring much which had
been rejected. And afterwards a great impression was
produced by the accession of a truly pious and model
Pope in the person of Innocent xi. (1676-1689), who
was at once engaged in earnest conflict with the Jesuits,
and made an attempt, feeble and ineffectual as it proved,
to put a check on their pernicious system of morals.
He was the only Pope who made such advances to
the Protestants as entirely to approve the negotiations
of Spinola, which were based on extensive concessions.
But his participation had to be kept secret, and Spinola
was obliged to act in his own name, without appealing




88           Reunion of the Churches.
to the plenary powers granted him by the Pope, because the French Cardinals in Rome were opposed to
the scheme.l  A religious reconciliation with Germany
would then, as afterwards, have been very inconvenient
for French policy.
These labours for reunion commenced in Germany
in  1675, and lasted  about thirty years.  Royas de
Spinola, a Spaniard who  had come to  Germany as
confessor of the Emperor Leopold's wife, and was made
bishop first of Teria (in Croatia), and then of Neustadt
near Vienna, was the first to undertake the enterprise.
Germany was still suffering from  the effects of the
Thirty Years' War, and the Jesuits, who were its authors,
were as powerful as ever at the Courts of Paris and
Vienna.  Both  the Emperor Leopold  and Louis xiv.
had intrusted their consciences to them, and followed
their counsel implicitly in religious matters; and if
the houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon were united, and
abandoned  their feud of 150 years' standing, they
seemed strong enough to crush Protestantism  on the
Continent, the more so as it had no powerful protector
1 [Some account of Spinola's labours, and of the negotiations for union
in the seventeenth century generally, may be found in two articles on
"Leibnitz's Letters on Reunion," in the Contemporary Review for May
and August 1867.]




Reaction of Seventeenth Century:        89
to fall back upon. But there was no prospect of this,
owing to the hostile attitude assumed by Louis towards
the imperial house and the German Empire.  The
Emperor Leopold was so deeply interested in the success of the undertaking that he at last brought the
negotiations for union  to Vienna, and  summoned
Leibnitz thither.
On the German Protestant side stood Leibnitz and
Molanus, the latter a well-grounded theologian of the
school of Calixtus; the former the leading mind of
Germany at that date, equally acute and capacious, and
of immense knowledge-an universal genius in his day,
like Aristotle of old, and in fact the first who raised
the credit of Germany before the world after the deep
decay of the seventeenth century.  After a while,
Bossuet, the most influential of the French bishops,
who might almost be called the theological oracle of
his age, was brought into the negotiations through the
intervention of some royal ladies.' Bossuet's famous
Exposition of the Catholic Faith had appeared some
time before, and had at once been translated into all
languages. The aim of his book was to distinguish
I [Especially of Anna Gonzaga of Mantua, wife of Edward, Count Palatine.]




90          Reunion of the Churches.
what is really dogma from  theological opinions and
inferences, and to place it before Protestants in the least
repellent form. It had been approved and commended
in Rome by Pope and Cardinals, and has almost
attained an(t preserved down to our own day the
authority of a Confession of Faith. Now, of course, like
so many other writings and views, it is abolished and
become obsolete, for it says nothing of the new articles
of faith fabricated since 1854, and characterizes as
mere school opinions what are now proposed as Divine
revelations. Thus Bossuet puts aside the question of
Infallibility, as a mere scholastic controversy having
no relation to faith; and this was approved at Rome
at the time.  Now, of course, he is no longer regarded in his own country as the classical theologian
and most eminent doctor of modern times, but as a
man who devoted his most learned and comprehensive work, the labour of many years, to the establishment and defence of a fundamental error, and spent
many years of his life in the perversion of facts and
distortion of authorities. For that must be the present
verdict of every infallibilist on Bossuet.
At that time the first condition in all such negotiations, which had to be demanded on the Catholic side,




Reaction of Seventeenth Century.        9I
was that the Protestants should no longer regard and
designate the Pope as Antichrist, and when this was
agreed upon Spinola and Molanus thought a great
point was gained. For this view was still universally
prevalent, and dominated the thoughts and feelings of
the people to such a degree that a contemporary
theologian, Hermann of Hurdt, could write to his
colleague Fabricius of Helmstadt that "all Protestants
are so bewitched with this conceit about Antichrist,
that they fly from  Catholics as from  snakes in the
garden, and think they see a dragon or an evil spirit if
they meet a Catholic." 1 According to the received view,
the apocalyptic images of the harlot seated on the
beast, who is drunk with the blood of the saints and
disciples of Jesus, and of Babylon that deceived the
nations, were not to be understood of heathen but of
papal Rome, and the Pope himself as the Antichrist
of Scripture,-a view put forward by the Protestant
divines as the foundation of their religion, though it
is inconsistent with Scripture and involves fatal contradictions.  But Rome was partly responsible for its
growth. If the Pope was constantly urging on religious
wars, and recommending the  extermination  of all
1 Mensel's Magazin, 1788, p. 118.




92         Reunion of the Churches.
heretics by the sword-and even at Rome executions
for Protestantism continued down into the seventeenth
century,-the people were sure to think they saw the
Papacy in the apocalyptic woman drunk with the blood
of the saints, just as it was easy to identify the Man of
Sin spoken of by St. Paul, who exalts himself above
everything divine, and sits in the temple of God, with
the Pope, claiming to be vicar of God, and to exercise
absolute dominion over all nations and Churches.
Untenable as these interpretations are critically, they
have had an enormous influence.  At the time of the
Reformation many thought this the only ground which
would justify them in conscience in separating from
the old Church and establishing a new one. For it is
said of Babylon or Rome in the Apocalypse, "Come
out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers in her
sins." Even during the last century these views have
had an enormous influence, and have built up a brazen
wall between Catholics and Protestants. At this hour
they are still deeply rooted and powerful in England and
America, and supported by a copious and constantly
increasing apocalyptic literature.  But in Germany
they have long since disappeared from the popular
belief, notwithstanding the sanction of the Smalkaldic




Reaction of Seventeenth Century.              93
Articles, and thereby, as it seems to me, one of the
most serious hindrances to a reunion of the two religions is removed.l
But at the end of the seventeenth century it was
very different in Germany. Then the song was sung
year by year in every Evangelical congregation" Defend us by thy word, O Lord,
From Pope and Paynim's murderous sword," 2
and the events of almost every year supplied a practical
commentary on this juxtaposition  of the two great
enemies.  In Hungary there had been a bloody persecution of Protestants, lasting ten years, and it was
notorious to all the world how Louis xiv. treated the
Reformed in  France.  The preachers therefore were
never at a loss for opportunities of asking the prayers
of their congregations for co-religionists suffering under
Antichristian tyranny. And the feeling thus engendered
made it impossible to bring theological negotiations
for reunion before the public; on the contrary, such
attempts had to be kept strictly private.
1 [See first Appendix in the author's First Age of Christianity and the
Church (W. H. Allen and Co.), on " History of Interpretation of 2 Thess.
ii. 12."]
2 [Cf. the popular Scotch ditty quoted in Scott's Abbot"The Paip, that Pagan fu' o' pride,
Hath blinded us ower lang."]




94         Reunion of the Churches.
Leibnitz did not become a Catholic privately, as has
been inferred from his unpublished work discovered
in MS. some fifty years ago, the so-called Systema
Theologicum. This work was only meant to show what
a thinking man might urge from the Catholic standpoint in favour of the controverted Catholic dogmas.
He did not indeed adhere to the Protestant form of
belief, in which there was much that he disapproved.
He wrote to the Landgrave of Hesse that had he been
born in the Catholic Church he should never have left
it, but that he could not join it while certain doctrines
continued to be enforced in all their naked harshness.
He thought the Protestants ought to accept any doctrine
proved to have been universally received in the ancient
Church of the Roman Empire. And in fact Molanus
had already managed to get rid of so many difficulties
that Bossuet thought the union would be pretty well
accomplished if the other theologians assented to his
view.  But both Leibnitz and Molanus considered it
essential that the Tridentine Council, with its manifold
anathemas, should be suspended, and the controverted
points examined and compared at a new  Council,
composed of Catholics and Protestants in common.
Leibnitz appealed in support of this view to the con



Reaction of Seventeenth Century.                 95
cessions made at Basle to the Hussites.   A  still better
example  would  have  been the Council of Florence,
where all the points of difference with the Greeks were
allowed to be re-examined and compared by both sides
together, without regard to the decrees of the Council of
Lyons in  1274.1   This condition however proved fatal
to the whole scheme.
The greatest difficulties, the stumblingblocks which
could  not be  removed, did  not even  come  under
discussion, or were only incidentally referred to. That
same Molanus, who showed himself so conciliatory and
almost  Catholic  in  matters  of  doctrine, afterwards
maintained against his colleagues that the revocation of
the edict of Nantes, and the persecution of Protestants
in France, with the formal approval of these proceedings by the very best of the Popes, Innocent xi., had
done more to confirm him in drawing a line between
Protestant and  Papal doctrine  than  all the  controversial divinity he had ever seen.2 Yet even Bossuet
1 [The Council of Florence was accordingly to have been accepted on
both sides, had the reunion proved permanent, as the Eighth (Ecumenical
Council, passing over all the medieval Councils since the separation of
East and West. It is actually called Octavum Concilium in the first Latin
issue of the Acts, published in 1526 under Clement VII., and thirty years
later in Cardinal Pole's Reformatio Anglice, a collection of statutes made
by him in his legatine capacity, and published at Rome in 1566.]
2 See the letter in Leukfeld's Antiquitates Arnelunstbornenses, p. 113.




96          Reunion of the Churches.
was unable to see, what must have been so clear to
every thinking man, that a Church which makes a rule
and principle of coercing conscience and exterminating
heretics by the sword, can only inspire hatred and
detestation.  There was one Pope, however, Clement
XIv., who does appear to have seen it. He says, " What
a happy revolution would have been witnessed, if,
instead of being persecuted, heretics had simply been
entreated and adjured with all possible gentleness not
to separate from the centre of unity; if their difficulties
had been explained with kindness, their objections
patiently listened to, and if, above all, they had been
addressed, as religion itself speaks, without bitterness
or pride." l I don't know whether Ganganelli rememlbered, when he wrote this, that he was condemning a
long line of his predecessors, and above all the canonized
Pius v.
There were other hostile and menacing circumstances
in the background of these negotiations for union, which
cast a dark shadow over every gleam of hope. Chief
among these was the Roman notion of the absolute
power of the Pope, and all attempts in apologetic
writings and expositions, such as Bossuet's and Veron's
1 Lettere Interessanti di Clemente X1V., Ninezia, 1778, iv. 60.




Reaction of Seventeenth Century.        97
before him, to explain this away, or make it look
harmless and beneficial, were sure in the end to prove
illusory. No Protestant ever judged the Papacy more
favourably than  Leibnitz, who  wished  to see the
temporal power of the Popes still further increased and
extended over the whole of Italy, that they might be
the better able to act as European arbiters, and hinder
wars of conquest. But an unlimited despotic power,
such as the Jesuits and all the Romanist party ascribed
to the Court of Rome, he considered equally intolerable
and mischievous. Then again it was a standing reproach
and objection urged against every representation of
Catholic doctrine put out for the benefit of Protestants,
that what looked good and innocent on paper had in
fact, and in its practical application to popular life, a
very different and most objectionable character. This
feeling was vividly expressed in the universal contradiction to Bossuet's representation evoked in Protestant
Europe.  Even Molanus did not conceal his conviction
that the Papal Church was far worse in worship than
in doctrine, as he had witnessed it in Italy, Spain, and
other Catholic countries; it was, indeed, so corrupted
that a thinking man, unacquainted with the Reformed
doctrine, could not but suppose the Christian religion
G




98          Reunion of the Churches.
was a political invention of the Popes for keeping men
in subjection.' The utter helplessness of the disputants
in this matter was brought to light when they came to
consider, in view of a future union, how the worst
excrescences of a crude and immoral superstition, by
the help of which the religious Orders preyed upon the
people, could be restrained. But with the independent
position of these Orders, and their financial wants,
nobody had any effective remedy to suggest. Leibnitz
says in one place,-" The great question is still thishow far it is allowable to wink at the public corruptions, especially when it looks as if the steps taken
amounted to a tacit approval of them."2
Bossuet's biographer, Cardinal Bausset, cannot explain by what fatality these promising efforts after
union, after proceeding so far, and with so rich a combination of talent, learning, and good-will engaged in
the cause, came to nothing, and left no trace behind
them. He thinks the interposition of Leibnitz frightened
the theologians, and ruined everything. Far from it;
on the contrary, Leibnitz would have made concessions
which the theologians shrank from. The real reason
1 Hock, Anton Ulrich, p. 113.
2 See Rheinfeld Briefwechsel, ed. Bimmel, ii. 78.




Reaction of Seventeenzt  Century.       99
was a different one. In dealing with a Church where
the actual creed of daily life differs so widely from the
theoretical creed, it is impossible to get beyond mere
theoretical negotiations. Bossuet himself did not choose
to see that; whenever any gross abuse was brought
before him, he would always point triumphantly to the
substance of the doctrine, which contained nothing
of the kind. And yet the great bishop and famous
doctor might himself have been pointed out as a
conspicuous example of ecclesiastical impotence. He
found himself, in his own Church, in presence of a
doctrine invented only a century before, which could
not but have a most decisive influence on the religious
position of every Christian,-the doctrine that fear
alone, without love of God, is sufficient for the
remission of sins. He considered this a most dangerous
error, affecting the very essence of Christianity, and
wrote against it; but he could not prevent the most
powerful of the religious Orders, with the knowledge
and support of the Holy See, taking this error under
its patronage, and acting upon it in the confessional
in his own diocese.  Yet he found it quite in order
that every one who had desired to administer Communion according to Christ's institution, simply for the




I00          Reunion fo the Churches.
sake of union and obedience, should have been excommunicated.  For theologians understand well how to
strain out gnats pnd swallow camels.
After these fruitless attempts of Bossuet, Molanus,
and Leibnitz, nothing further of the kind was undertaken for 170 years, either in Germany or elsewhere.l
Men were thoroughly discouraged and deterred. On the
Protestant side, the gradual advance of rationalism
hindered any further thought of union, and among
Catholics there could be no idea of reviving those efforts
till after the abolition of the Jesuits in 1773.  But
they had too much to do in setting their own house in
order, and the best of them  thought they could only
invite the guests they wished to see when the house had
been cleansed.  In our own day there are phenomena
which exhibit a real or apparent affinity with the ideas
and efforts it is the aim of these Lectures to suggest to
the minds of believing Christians. Many would reckon
among these the "Evangelical Alliance," a British and
American product of a kind of unionist sentiment.
But this association, of which very little has been
heard lately, has confined itself to a mere external
1 [The correspondence of Archbishop Wake with the doctors of the
Sorbonne early in the eighteenth century had a similar aim, though it led
to no result.1




Reaction of Seventeenth Century.    IoI
combination and common action  of all Protestant
communities for an offensive and defensive alliance
against the ancient Churches.  The fusion of the
Lutheran and Reformed Churches brought about by
Frederick-William III. has remained a mere fragmentary
work, and has led to internal divisions, the end of
which is yet to be seen; and one of the most eminent
Protestant theologians, Kahnis, has declared only this
year that "the introduction of the union into the
Lutheran national Churches of Germany, Russia, and
Scandinavia, would be the beginning of incurable
discords which would probably end in their dissolution.
To carry it out generally is an impossibility."  The
fundamental principle of this union, which is to leave
the most opposite doctrines to co-exist side by side,
unmodified and unreconciled, and let every one choose
between them, has not succeeded.
The recently formed community of the Irvingites
might be regarded as in some sense a favourable symptom, pointing to hopes of union.  It includes some
highly respectable men, familiar with ecclesiastical antiquity. The exclusive product of a Protestant soil, and
founded by men trained in Protestant belief, it approxi1 Christenthum und Lutherthum, Leipsic, 1872.




102         Reunion of the Churches.
mates in essential points to the ancient Churches of
East and West. It reminds one strongly of a phenomenon of the second century, Montanism.  Perhaps
it is still possible to strip off from the system much
which appears to those who look at it from without
too fantastical and directly contradictory to the mind
of the ancient Church, such as the revival of the
Apostolate, and the immediate expectation of the great
crisis of the world's history intimated in Scripture.
Where faith and love are found, there hope cannot
be absent.  He who believes in Christ, and loves his
country and Christians of all confessions, cannot divest
himself of the hope that no distant future may reveal a
Church which, as the genuine heir and representative
of the Church of the early centuries, may have room
and power of attraction for those who are now separated; a Church where liberty will be reconciled with
order, discipline, morality, and unity of faith with
science and freedom of inquiry.




LECTURE VI.
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, ITS NATURE AND RESULTS.
A T the beginning of the Reformation the island
kingdom of England was far behind-hand in
power, wealth, and population; indeed, 150 years later
it had only five million inhabitants. It possessed no
fleets, no manufactures, no colonies, and no army.
But it was better prepared ecclesiastically than the
Latin countries for receiving the seed brought over
from Germany. From the end of the thirteenth century, and constantly during the fourteenth, it had
resisted the encroachments and extortionate demands
of the Roman Court with the united force of King
and Parliament.  And Wycliffe, one of Luther's
forerunners, and the Lollard sect, had disseminated
doctrines which partly corresponded with those proclaimed at Wittenberg.  But it was from above, and
not from beneath, as in Germany, from the Crown,
103




I04         Reunion of the Churches.
not from the people, that the ecclesiastical revolution
in England received its impulse, rule, and form.  No
man of first-rate eminence appeared-no Luther, or
Calvin, or Melanchthon —to take the lead of the movement. Minds of an inferior order, possessed with the
ideas struck out at Wittenberg and Zurich, served as
the instruments for naturalizing those principles in
England and effecting the ecclesiastical changes.
It is well known that what brought about the breach
with Rome and the transference of the papal supremacy
to the King was the affair of Henry viI.'s divorce.
The whole English clergy submitted, renounced the
Pope, and promised to regard him henceforth only as
Bishop of Rome. One bishop alone, Fisher of Rochester,
resisted, and went to the scaffold. There was no intention, however, of separating from communion with the
Pope; and his rights in relation to the universal Church,
such as the summoning and presiding over General
Councils, were not called in question.  The people
were expressly assured that England continued to be
a portion of the Catholic Church, of which the Roman
Church was another branch.'  Nor was there any
change of doctrine introduced.  But a series of Acts
1 In the Institution of a Christian Man, 1537, approved by twenty-one
Bishops. See Formularies of Faith (Oxford, 1825), p. 55.




The English Reformalion.                Io5
were passed-the Parliament being entirely at one with
the King-which extended the royal authority over the
Church further, until at last all ecclesiastical power
seemed to be derived from  the Crown.  The notion
invented  by  the  sycophants  of  Rome  since  the
thirteenth  century, that the episcopal was a mere
derivation from the papal authority, was now in England transferred to the Crown.
Clement VII. had already excommunicated the King,
but in 1538 appeared a Bull of his successor, Paul III.,
which excited universal astonishment, for it almost
looked as if he wished to alienate the whole nation
from him, and drive it into complete separation from
the See of Rome.  He not only deposed the King and
consigned him  to eternal perdition, if he  did  not
appear before  his  tribunal, but laid  all England
under an interdict, which means, according to Roman
teaching, that a  Pope  punishes  and  imperils  the
salvation of millions of innocent persons for the sins
of one or a few guilty persons. He forbade all divine
worship and administration of sacraments,l forbade every
Englishman to obey any royal command, deprived all
1 [There are some exceptions to this rule. Baptism can be administered
to children, and the last sacraments to the dying, under an interdict, and
confessions can be heard. —Cf. Soglia, Instit. Jur. Priv. Eccl., Paris, p. 556.]




o16        Reunion of the Churches.
the King's adherents of their civil rights, abrogated all
treaties made with them or oaths sworn to them, prohibited all traffic with them, and gave up the property
of all Englishmen to be plundered by foreigners. And
this was done in 1538, when a great part of Germany
and  Switzerland, and the northern kingdoms, had
already risen against Rome, and thousands in Europe
were eager to make capital out of such weak points of
the Roman See, and thus increase the widely-spread
abhorrence of the Curia. It might really be regarded
as an example of judicial blindness.
After Henry's death in 1547 the Reformation was
carried further in a Protestant sense under Edward vI.,
always from above, by means of the royal supremacy
over the Church. Archbishop Cranmer, and Somerset,
who was regent for his nephew, a boy of ten years old,
worked together, not without opposition from the mass
of the people, who were still Catholic in their
sympathies; and there were revolts, which had to be
extinguished in blood.  For the nobility seized the
Church property, the country people took up arms, the
class of small landowners disappeared, and tenantfarmers took their place. But among the clergy there
was only passive submission.




The English Reformation.           I07
The whole edifice of the new religion collapsed when
Mary, the daughter of a Spanish mother and wife of
Philip ii. of Spain, succeeded to the throne on the early
death of Edward. Unreservedly devoted to the Pope,
full of burning hatred against the new heresy, and hard
and pitiless as her father, she at once broke the promise
given to the people, when they rose in her favour, of
leaving the laws of the land unaltered. She surrounded
herself with like-minded counsellors, and a Parliament
elected under strong government influence seconded all
her plans.  Cardinal Pole appeared, as papal legate, to
absolve the nation from the anathemas of Rome, and
England found itself again under the dominion of the
Pope. The nation was soon taught at how dear a price
of human life it had again become Roman. Hitherto
the Protestant doctrine had made little advance in the
minds of the people, the majority of whom adhered to
their ancestral faith; the decided Protestants could be
named and counted.  But now  the papal legate,
Cardinal Pole, the man who ruled England both in
religious and civil matters, was himself charged with
suspicion of heresy by the terrible Paul iv.-the Pope
who saw no salvation for Italy or the world except in
the dungeons and piles of the Inquisition,-and was




108        Rezunion of the Churches.
summoned to Rome to answer for his faith. He did
not go, but left his implacable persecution and extermination of heretics to bear witness before the Pope
and  the Roman Inquisition to his unimpeachable
orthodoxy.  And thus within three years about 300
persons were burnt, including some bishops, several
priests, and fifty-five women.
Hundreds of thousands of Protestant writings scattered over the length and breadth of the land, and
disseminated in the cottages of the poor, would not
have done so much to strengthen the Protestant
doctrine as the spectacle of the fires of Smithfield, and
the testimony borne by so many men and women, most
of whom could have purchased their lives by recantation, going with such wonderful courage to the stake.
The impression then made has remained to this day
powerfully and indelibly impressed on the popular
mind. And if the hatred of everything called Popery
has shown itself for the last three centuries stronger
and deeper in England than in any other nation, Mary
and her counsellors are responsible for the origin of a
feeling which was no doubt afterwards intensified by
the Gunpowder Plot.
Mary carried with her to the grave the hatred and




The English Reformnation.                I09
detestation of her people; and  her sister Elizabeth
mounted the throne in 1558 amid loud and universal
rejoicings.   The re-establishment of papal domination
had not obtained much favour even among the populace,
whose sympathies were Catholic, and Paul iv. himself
took care that the new Queen should have no choice.
He made it a question of life and death for her to
abjure Rome.  When she announced her accession to
him, he replied by censuring her "presumption," and
declaring that she had been stigmatized by his predecessors as illegitimate, and therefore incapable of
succeeding, and  that  the  decision  on  the  subject
belonged  to him   alone as suzerain  of England, a
pretension of Rome long since rejected by Parliament.
The supremacy over the Church which her father
and brother had enjoyed was now again assigned by
Parliament to the Queen, who thereby took the place
of the Pope.  The Act of Uniformity imposed on all
Churches the use of the Liturgy of Edward vi., modified
in a Catholic sense.1 Every clergyman was required,
on pain of deprivation, to take the Oath of Royal
1 [That is, the Second Liturgy of Edward vi. It had been the Queen's
original wish and intention to restore the First, and with some Catholic
additions; but it was found necessary to abandon the design, in order to
conciliate the extreme, or, as it was afterwards called, Puritan party.See Hook's Life of Archbishop Parker, pp. 158 sqq.]




I I  Reunion of the Churches.
Supremacy, and out of 9000 only about 189, or one in
fifty, refused it.l Most of the bishops refused, and new
ones were appointed and validly ordained, so that the
succession was not interrupted. A short formulary of
faith, in Thirty-nine Articles, setting forth substantially the Protestant doctrine, but in modified form and
with many compromises, became law.  And thus the
Reformation in England and the edifice of the English
episcopal Church was completed. It differed from all
reformed Churches of the  Continent, but wished  to
remain  in  connexion  with  them; and  the political
situation forced Elizabeth more and more into the position of a protector of European Protestantism  generally.
Meanwhile the number of Catholics was still considerable, but as all churches and chapels belonged to
the dominant religion, and absence from service was
punished with fines, they took part in public worship;
and thus to all outward appearance there seemed to be
but one Church in the country, and every likelihood of
the old faith dying out in one or two generations. This
state of things lasted till about 1570, when new priests,
1 [This must be taken with some reserve. The Supremacy Oath was
certainly imposed by law from the first; but there is reason to believe
that for many years of Elizabeth's reign the majority of the clergy
abstained from taking it, with the tacit connivance of the Government.
There is no evidence of more than about 800 being sworn in 1559.]




The English Reformation.             I I I
trained in the strictest Roman system, came to England
from the clerical seminaries established on the Continent, and the Jesuits also commenced their labours
there. Then, for the first time, many separated themselves from  the  national worship; and then, too,
appeared the Bull of Pius v., which not only deposed
Elizabeth, but forbade all Englishmen to acknowledge
her on pain of excommunication, without, however,
proposing any other king or regent for their allegiance.
And thus all Catholics who did not rebel were excommunicated, and it seemed to be the sole aim of the
Pope, who had already tried to get Elizabeth put out
of the way by assassination, to produce a general
confusion and bloody civil war in England.
The most zealous of the Papal party wanted to make
Philip of Spain master of England. A series of plots,
conspiracies, and revolts followed. Elizabeth could say
with truth that her life was daily threatened, and more
than any other in Europe. A new Bull of Sixtus v.,
issued in 1588 in support of the Spanish invasion,
renewed her deposition, on the express ground that the
Pope alone was entitled to decide who should wear
the English crown.l Well might Urban viii. say after1 [It is remarkable, however, that Sixtus v., one of the ablest Popes of




1 12          Reunion of the Churches.
wards that the Popes, his predecessors, were responsible for the loss of England.' The laws against foreign
priests were now  made more stringent, and the mere
performance of sacerdotal functions became a capital
offence. A considerable number of priests were actually
executed, who showed great constancy in death. The
first who  were  condemned  were  questioned  as  to
whether they would obey the Pope or the laws of the
land in civil matters, and those who answered in the
latter sense were spared.
Meanwhile the Jesuits had developed their doctrine
of tyrannicide into a system, and had disseminated it
both by writing and orally. They taught that, as the
Pope has a divine right, in the interest of religion, to
depose monarchs and annul all their official acts, the
deposed monarch, if he tries to retain his dignity, is an
usurper and tyrant, and may be put to death.  That
this teaching endangered the life of every prince disthe post-Reformation era, personally entertained a strong sympathy for
Elizabeth, and to the last cherished hopes of her conversion. At one time
he even requested Henry III. of France to enter into communication with
her on the subject, and he seems to have given only a reluctant sanction
to the Spanish Armada. On the other hand, Elizabeth, when urged by
her ministers to marry, was wont to reply, "I know of but one man
worthy of my hand, and that is Sixtus v."-Cf. Hiibner's Life and Times
of Sixtus V., passim.]
1 [A similar remark is attributed to Pius Iv. in reference to Paul Iv.'s
policy.]




The English Reformation.            I 3
pleasing to the Court of Rome was shown in the
murder of Henry iII. of France, and the attempts
on the life of Henry iv., and of William of Orange,
for these two princes also at last fell beneath the
daggers of fanatics.  And if there was already a
disposition in England to look on every Catholic
as a born enemy of the State and its rulers, this
was further increased by the Gunpowder Plot at
the beginning of James.'s reign, which filled up the
measure of the misfortunes of the unhappy adherents
of the old Church. The discovery of this Satanic plot
for blowing up King and Parliament was commemorated in England by a Church festival, only recently
abolished.  Pope Clement vm., who had some years
previously urged Henry iv. to assist the King of Spain
in conquering England, had just before directed the
Catholics to hinder the accession of James, and English Jesuits were deeply implicated in the plot, of
whom two were found guilty and executed, and one
escaped. King James, with the view of providing some
protection for his own life and that of his son, introduced, in concurrence with Parliament, a special oath
for Catholics-the Oath of Allegiance. They were to
abjure, as impious and heretical, the doctrine that the
H




I 14        Reunion of the Churches.
Pope can depose sovereigns and absolve subjects from,
their oath of allegiance, and that princes excommunicated by the Pope may be deposed and murdered. The
sorely oppressed Catholics, whose condition had been
rendered much worse by the last conspiracy, were to
gain some toleration by taking this oath; but Paul v.
forbade their taking it on pain of damnation, and all
Catholics who took it were to be refused the sacraments. And Cardinal Bellarmine wrote a treatise to
prove its unlawfulness.
Meanwhile no express declaration of the Roman
Court, explaining in what the soul-destroying character of the oath consisted, could be obtained by any
entreaties, and many priests suffered death rather than
take it. James, who, from various political grounds,
and partly from fear, wished to be on peaceable terms
with the See of Rome, intimated to the Pope, through
the French ambassador, that he would acknowledge
him as the first bishop and president of the Church,
if he would renounce the arrogant claim to depose
sovereigns. But Paul replied that he could not do so
without falling into heresy himself. This conduct of the
Pope's made the condition of Catholics in England a
terribly painful one-the priests threatened with death




The English Reformation.                      I  5
on the scaffold, and the laity objects of universal suspicion, detested by their fellow-countrymen and subjected to heavy exactions. There seemed no prospect
left them   but of  constant  diminution  and  gradual
extinction; and in  fact they  had dwindled  down to
150,000 by 1630, according to the report of the Papal
nuncio, Panzani.  Well might they represent to Rome,
through Father Leander, that they had suffered more
for  the  Papacy  than  any  other Catholics.l   Father
Leander also represented that Charles I. was surprised
to find that doctrines allowed in France were condemned in England.  It was universally said that the
i [Father Leander, an English Benedictine, was sent to England by
Urban vIII. in 1632, and Father Panzani, an Oratorian of Arezzo, in 1634,
both with the sanction of the Government, as well to examine and report
on the condition of the English Roman Catholics as on the true state
of the Church of England.  On the latter point they reported very
favourably, and the idea of a reunion was seriously entertained on both
sides, though it eventually fell through, chiefly owing to the bitter opposition of the Jesuits on one side, and the Puritans on the other. Father
Leander reports of the Anglicans: " They agree in all the doctrine of the
Trinity and Incarnation and true Deity of our Blessed Saviour; in the
points of Providence, predestination, justification, necessity of good works,
co-operation of free will with the grace of God. They admit the first four
General Councils, the three authentic symbols of the Apostles, Nice or
Constantinople, and of St. Athanasius, as they are received in the Roman
Church: they reverence the primitive Church and unanimous consent of
the ancient Fathers, and all traditions and ceremonies which can be sufficiently proved by testimony of antiquity: they admit a settled liturgy
taken out of the Roman liturgy, distinction of orders, bishops, priests,
and deacons, in distinct habits from the laity, and divers other points in
which no transmarine Protestants do agree."-Clarendon State Papers,
vol. i. p. 207; quoted also in Charles Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic




I 6            Reunion of the Churches.
Popes vindicated the doctrines whereby the authors of
the Gunpowder Plot excused  their murderous attack
on the King and the nobility.
But now, as before, it was all in vain. The Popes
had  again  and  again  been  told  that the  notion  of
murder committed in  the interests of religion  being
meritorious, was so widely spread, so disgraceful and
injurious to Catholicism, and so strongly confirmed by
Jesuit writings, that there was urgent need for one
Pope at least publicly and solemnly to condemn this
error.  But Rome held her peace; it was impossible
even  to  get the worst of the Jesuit writings which
recommended tyrannicide placed on the Index.
The events which occurred in Ireland served to intensify the hatred of the English nation against Rome
and the Catholics, and to exhibit the Popes as the most
irreconcilable and dangerous enemies of England. On
Church, p. 2. And he adds: "Union seemeth possible enough, if the
points were discussed in an assembly of moderate men, without contention
or desire of victory, but out of a sincere desire of Christian union; especially since the learneder sort of Protestants hold this difference to be no
impediment to salvation, and grant besides that the Church of Rome is
a true member of the Church of Christ."-Ibid. p. 208. On the other
hand, Montague, Bishop of Chichester, assured Panzani that only three
out of the whole bench of Bishops could be considered opposed to the
scheme.-Panzani's Memoirs, p. 246.  It is clear from Heylin's Life of
Laud that the primate was favourably disposed towards it. See for further
information on these negotiations an interesting essay on " 1636 and 1866,"
in Essays on Reunion, Hayes, 1867, and cf. infra, p. 121.]




The English Reformation.           I  7
the pretext that the Emperor Constantine had given all
islands to the Pope, Adrian Iv. had bestowed Ireland on
Henry I., king of England. At the time of the Wars
of the Roses the English rule over Ireland had again
collapsed. The Popes had impressed on the Irish that
their island was a papal fief over which they exercised
supreme rights of suzerainty, and accordingly, when
the English kings ceased to discharge the duties of
vassals, Gregory xiII. had sent an English theologian,
Sanders, as his legate to Ireland, with Italian officers,
and appointed an Irish general, Desmond, to rouse the
inhabitants, who had been deprived of the exercise of
Catholic worship without having become Protestants,
and to lead them in a holy war against England. The
enterprise failed, and at the death of Elizabeth in 1603
Ireland was completely subjected to England.
Then broke out the insurrection of 1642, and a massacre followed in which several thousand Protestants
were killed. A papal nuncio, Runiccini, came, and for
some time acquired possession of supreme power. Ireland was to be entirely separated from England, and
annexed either to Spain or to some Italian principality
under the suzerainty of the Pope.l Cromwell's conI Ranke, Eng. Gesch., Werke, vol. xvii. p. 26.




I 8         Reunion of tie Churches.
quest of Ireland put an end to this scheme. At the
Restoration in 1660, a prospect was held out to the
Irish Catholics of religious toleration and regaining
their property, on condition of their taking an oath of
allegiance to the King, and repudiating all right of the
Pope to depose him or absolve his subjects from the
duty of civil obedience.  A  similar declaration had
been required of the English Catholics in 1647 by
Parliament, on the motion of Lord Fairfax, as the condition of religious toleration. But Innocent x. had at
once strictly forbidden them to accept any declaration
of the kind, and excommunicated those who had already
subscribed it.  And now almost the whole property of
Catholics and the social existence of the nobility was
at stake in Ireland.  But the papal nuncio at Brussels,
and the Irish Bishops who were under him, condemned
in accordance with papal teaching the " Remonstrance,"
which 121 nobles had already signed. The theologians
who drew it up, Walsh, Carew, and Coppinger, were
persecuted and censured, and thus the fate of Ireland
was sealed for centuries.  This result was most gratifying to the Cromwellian soldiers and English and
Scotch adventurers, who had come into possession
of the property through the war and confiscations.




The English Reformation.           I 19
King Charles confirmed them in their possessions, and
also confirmed the suppression of Catholic worship.
The Catholic nobility of Ireland fell, the entire property
passed into Protestant hands, and the mass of the
Catholic population sank into an ignorant and barbarous proletariate.  But the Pope's right to depose kings,
annul oaths, and command rebellion, was preserved
inviolate!
Elizabeth and her advisers had attempted to weld
together in the edifice of their State Church foreign and
mutually hostile elements, which were now  sure to
conflict with each other. The notion of two or more
different Churches dwelling peacefully side by side was
at that time hardly thought conceivable, and only
admitted as a last resource, under pressure of extreme
necessity. And therefore the national Church had to be
made capacious enough to embrace and tolerate in its
bosom  the two opposite parties already existing in
England,-the Calvinist and the Catholic.
Calvinism, chiefly represented by the exiles who had
returned from  Switzerland after Mary's death, and
forced their way into Church offices under Elizabeth,
developed more and more into Puritanism from the end
of the sixteenth century; and the Puritans began to




120        Reunion of the Churches.
agitate for a new reformation of the Church, on the
principle of receding to the furthest possible distance
from Catholic rites and forms.  In opposition to this
movement a Catholicizing  school, appealing to the
ancient Church, developed itself from about 1618; and
through the favour of James I. and Charles I., who saw
in a hierarchical organization and a strong episcopate
a powerful support of the monarchy, the episcopal sees
were filled with members of this school. The Laudian
school, as it may be named after one of its most
prominent representatives, the unfortunate Archbishop
Laud, became, in the period between about 1620 and
1670, the predecessor of the "Oxford" or " Ritualistic "
school of to-day, and may be said to have formed a
permanent unionist academy, although matters never
advanced in England to the stage of regular negotiations,
as was afterwards the case in Germany. In the writings
of these men, Andrewes, Montague, Laud, Bramhall,
Hammond, Thorndyke, and others, we meet with
manifold expressions of a desire for reunion, and a
hope of its accomplishment. It would be impossible
to commend the unity of the Church more eloquently
and emphatically than, e.g. Hammond has done, who
regards it as the noblest gift of God, the grace above




The English Reformation.           12 I
all graces, the duty above all duties, the fulness of
heavenly joy; while he regards the Churches and
religious parties of his own day as the palpitating and
violently dismembered limbs of a living body, which
present the most revolting and painful spectacle, as
though torn asunder on the rack. And the complaint
constantly recurs in the works of these writers,-" If
only Rome would be less hard, and not lay on us
burdens we cannot bear, and make demands which
are intolerable." The English bishops told Panzani,
who was sent as papal agent in 1634, that two parties
were labouring to hinder the union of the English
and Roman Churches, viz., the Puritans and the
Jesuits.l
But the bishops and theologians stood almost alone
in the nation with their Catholic tendencies, so powerful
had the Protestant spirit, in its crudest form, become
in England through the influence of events, and so
deeply had fear, horror, and hatred  of everything
connected with the Papacy sunk into the popular
mind. The charge against Archbishop Laud, of having
aimed at an union of the English Church with Rome,
brought the primate of the Established Church to the
1 [See above, p. 115, note.]




12 2        Reunion of the Churches.
block; and it is worth remarking that his not having
regarded the Pope as Antichrist formed one item in the
indictment.  It availed him  nothing that he had
declined the offer of a Cardinal's hat, and had written
a learned work against the Papacy.
The Episcopal Church, closely bound up with the
monarchy, shared its fall, and Puritanism triumphed
with its Calvinistic doctrine, its rejection of episcopacy,
sacrifice, and priesthood, and its dislike of religious
symbolism  and liturgical worship.  But it was soon
weakened by internal dissensions, three great Puritan
sects-the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptistsmutually assailing one another, and with the fall of the
Commonwealth after twelve years its dominion also
came to an end. At the Restoration, the Episcopal
Church was re-established as well as the monarchy,
and with the full approval of the nation, which was
heartily sick of sectarian domination.  In 1662 two
thousand Puritan ministers suffered deprivation rather
than submit to the ritual of the Episcopal Church, as
enjoined by the Act of Uniformity, just as twelve years
before many thousands of the Anglican clergy had
resigned their benefices rather than accept the Puritan
dogmas and forms. What a contrast with the Catholic




The English Reformation.           123
clergy in Elizabeth's reign, when among 9400 not 200
could be found to sacrifice their benefices rather than
submit to the Protestant doctrine!
This was the sixth great change in the English
Church since the beginning of the Reformation, and
thenceforth its continuity has not again been interrupted, however great the fluctuation of religious views
was and is among its members. The greatest change
of feeling was wrought by the four years' reign of
James II. He, having himself become a Catholic, did
not wish, like his father and brother, to pave the way
for a gradual union of the two Churches, but thought
to subjugate all England to the Pope by treachery and
violence, and to introduce the Jesuit type of Catholicism as the national religion-a scheme betraying a quite
abnormal measure of blindness.  For the English
Catholics no longer formed even a hundredth part of the
population, and no feeling was stronger among the overwhelming majority of the nation than hatred against
the Pope and the papal Church. His policy led to the
Revolution of 1688. James was dethroned, and died a
fugitive in France; his descendants remained pretenders,
and a German royal family, the house of Brunswick,
mounted the English throne.  But the result of this




124         Reunion of the Churches.
danger and excitement, and of lively theological controversy with Catholic divines, was to give the Church a
strong impetus in the Protestant direction. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the only representatives left of the earlier Catholicizing school were the
Nonjurors, who had been thrust out of their dignities
and benefices for refusing to acknowledge the new
dynasty, and became extinct about the middle of the
century.
Under the pressure of a still severer penal code,
and the dispiriting consciousness of being objects of
universal suspicion, the English Catholics constantly
diminished in number, and by 1780 they had shrunk
to about 65,000. in all. But towards the end of the
eighteenth, and increasingly since the beginning of the
present century, followed the great immigration of
Irish Catholics, purchased by an oath in which at length
the deposing power of the Pope was openly and expressly abjured, and in the very words of the formula
of James I. It was taken by all the Bishops and VicarsApostolic, and Rome held her tongue. And if in our
day the English Catholics number about a million, or a
twentieth part of the nation, nine —tenths of them are of
Irish descent. The first mitigation of the penal laws




The English Reformation.               125
took place in 1778, but so bitter was still the popular
hatred, that in 1780 there was a great outbreak in
London, roused by the well-known "No-Popery" cry,
(the Lord George Gordon riots), when Catholic chapels
were destroyed, and the re-enactment of the penal laws
was demanded of Parliament, though without success.
As a  condition  of complete  emancipation  Pitt
required and obtained (in 1760) from the Theological
Faculties of the Sorbonne, Louvain, Douay, Valladolid,
Salamanca, and Alcala, a declaration that the Pope has
no civil authority in England, that he cannot absolve
from the Oath of Allegiance, and that faith must be
kept with heretics.'  And when at last, in 1824, the
time of full emancipation was approaching, and the
recollection of Papal Bulls, insurrections, and conspiracies of former times was found to be still the
grand impediment to the bestowal of civil equality on
Catholics, the English and Irish bishops issued solemn
declarations to the effect that the Popes have not the
slightest civil authority or any right to enforce religious
duties by temporal means, such as corporal punishment and the like.   This too Rome tolerated, for
1 [The document is given at length in the Second Appendix to Sir John
Cox Hippesley's Speech on a Petition of the Irish Roman Catholics, May
18, 1810, 2d ed., London, 1810. Cf. Edinburgh Review, vol. xvii. 13 sqq.]




126            Reunion of the Churches.
emancipation  depended  on  it.   And  as it involved
the rejection of the theory of Papal infallibility, it was
stated in the English Catechisms that this pretended
Catholic doctrine was a Protestant invention.l But
the English  and  Irish  bishops of this day do not hold
themselves bound by the words of their predecessors,
1 [In Keenan's Controversial Catechism, published by "the Catholic
Publishing Company, New Bond Street," and largely circulated, especially
in Ireland, the following Question and Answer occur, or did occur till
a twelvemonth ago, at p. 112: " Q  Must not Catholics believe the Pope
in himself to be infallible? A. This is a Protestant invention; it is no
article of the Catholic faith; no decision of his can oblige under pain of
heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body, that is, by
the Bishops of the Church." As late as August 1871 the Catechism was on
sale in its original form in Dublin, but since then the leaf containing this
passage has been cancelled and another substituted, in which this Question
and Answer are omitted, and the book can only be obtained now in its
expurgated form. As regards the testimony of the English and Irish
Catholic bishops referred to in the text, the following important passage
occurs in Bishop Clifford's objections to the infallibility decree, printed at
Rome by authority during the Council in the Synopsis Analytica Observationum (see Friedrich's Documenta Cone. Vat., vol. ii. p. 259):-" Another
great mischief is that before Catholics were liberated from the penal laws,
and admitted to full liberty and civil equality with their fellow-citizens,
bishops and theologians were publicly asked by Parliament whether the
Catholics of England believed that the Pope could, without the express or
implied assent of the Church, impose definitions in relation to faith or
morals upon the people. All the bishops, among whom were two predecessors of his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, and the
theologians, answered that Catholics did not so believe. This appears in
the printed papers of Parliament. In reliance on these answers the English
Parliament admitted Catholics to participation in civil rights. Who will
be able to persuade Protestants that Catholics have not violated honour
and good faith, inasmuch as when the acquisition of civil rights was in question they publicly declared that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was no
part of the Catholic faith, but as soon as they have gained what they
wanted abandon their public profession of faith and assert the contrary? "1




The English Reformation.                 127
and regard the doctrine of the episcopate of 1826 as
a doctrine condemned by the present Church.
In  outward  form  the  position  of the Episcopal
Church in the present day is the same as in the last
century.  The Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy,
which do not harmonize strictly with each other, still
form the obligatory standard for its members; it still
retains undisputed possession of its rich endowments,
and the majority of the nation still belong to it, —
an overwhelming proportion of the upper classes and
rural population, but not so many of the middle class
in towns. But the Dissenting communities, weakened
by the disappearance of the Presbyterians,' but reinforced during the last hundred years by the numerous
sect of Wesleyans or Methodists, are stronger and
better organized in their common antagonism  to the
State Church than at any former period. It may still
be said with truth that no Church is so national, so
deeply rooted in popular affection, so bound up with
the institutions and manners of the country, or so
powerful in its influence on national character. During
1 [The English Presbyterians have not disappeared altogether, though
their numbers are diminished through the lapse of a large proportion into
Socinianism. It was stated in the Eclectic Review for February 1832 that
out of 258 Presbyterian congregations in England 232 had become
Unitarian.-See Letters to a Dissenter, Seeley. p. 106.]




I28           Reunion of the Churches.
the last forty years it has extended its range, besides
strengthening itself internally by the foundation of
numerous colonial bishoprics in  all quarters of the
world.l   It  possesses  a rich  theological literature,
inferior only to the German in extent and depth, and
an excellent translation of the Bible, a masterpiece of
style, and more accurate than the Lutheran; and it has
made the Bible a people's book all over England, so
that one finds it even  in  the bedrooms of hotels.
I believe we  may  credit one  great superiority  of
England over other countries to the circumstance that
there the Holy Scripture is found in every house, as is
the case nowhere else in the world, and is, so to speak,
the good genius of the place, the protecting spirit of the
domestic hearth and family.  I mean  that no such
literature of sin and shame as has poisoned the moral
atmosphere  of France, and is, alas! circulated in  a
lesser degree in Germany, has yet found entrance into
the British Isles. Another point of superiority is the
observance of Sunday, which all Churches and parties
have at heart, though it is not at present free from
I [In the Calendar of the English Church for 1872 I find fifty colonial
dioceses enumerated, in South and West Africa, North America, Australasia,
China, India, the West Indies, Sandwich Islands, and Islands of the Western
Pacific.]




The English Refornation.             I29
Judaizing exaggerations. But what I should estimate
most highly is the  fact that the  cold, dull indifferentism, which on the Continent has spread like a
deadly mildew over all degrees of society, has no place
in the British Isles. To whatever extent scepticism
may have advanced among the younger generation, on
the whole the Englishman takes an active part in Church
interests and questions, and that unnatural division
and hostility between laity and clergy produced by
ultramontanism in Catholic countries is quite unknown
there; so much so, that the influence of the prevalent
manners has extended to English Catholics, and the
relations of the laity to the priesthood among them
are  more  intimate and confidential than anywhere
else.  What has been accomplished during the last
thirty years by the energy and generosity of religious
Englishmen, set in motion and guided by the Church,
in the way of popular education and church building,
far exceeds what has been done in any other country.'
Attendance at religious worship on Sunday is not, as in
France, the exception but the rule with the higher and
middle classes. The Church Congress at Nottingham in
1 [The Calendar of the English Church for 1872 (Rivingtons) gives a list
of ninety-six churches and chapels re-opened after restoration or reconstruction, and seventy-eight new ones built, during 1871 only.]
I




130         Reunion of the Churches.
October last (1871), in which sixteen bishops and some
three thousand clergymen and laymen of the most
various ranks and classes took part, presented an
enviable spectacle to other nations.  The weightiest
religious questions of the day, and the special events
and difficulties of the Anglican Church, were discussed
with a dignity and thoroughness which suggests to
every German the tacit inquiry whether anything of
the kind would be possible with us.
But there is no doubt a dark side to the picture,
and three points will at once strike the eye of every
observer. In the first place may be mentioned what
is in England called Erastianism,-the heavy yoke
of State supervision under which the English Church
groans, a yoke it has indeed imposed on its own
neck and daily confirms by the subscription of the
Thirty-nine Articles. For this alone of all Churches
in its confession of faith declares it to be a divinely
revealed doctrine, that Councils cannot be held without
the permission of secular princes, which implies the
right of the State not to allow  any authoritative
declaration of doctrine without its own control and
consent.l The King or Queen, now represented by
1 [This is hardly accurate. The Thirty-nine Articles do not profess, like




The English Reformation.                      13 
the Privy Council, chiefly composed of laymen, is the
Supreme  Court of Appeal for all dogmatic  or ritual
questions. Its decisions in the two famous cases of
Gorham  and Denisonl some years ago drove numbers
of clergymen out of the Church, which seemed to them
desecrated by this bondage.
A second great evil is the religious neglect of the
masses congregated in the great towns. The Church,
with her existing machinery, cramped by the family
ties of the clergy and the want of religious corporations,
feels herself powerless in the presence of this constantly
increasing heathenism; and all the isolated attempts to
meet the crisis have hitherto proved unavailing.
But the greatest difficulty and most painful disease
of  the  English  Church  is  the  internal rivalry  and
antagonism of parties and systems, and the harassing
the Creeds, or dogmatic Canons of Councils, to deal only with revealed
doctrine, but to be a formula drawn up " for the avoiding of diversities of
opinion" in the public teaching of the clergy, who are alone required to
subscribe them. Moreover, the 21st Article is susceptible of a different
interpretation from  that given in the text.  See Tract 90 (new  ed.,
Rivingtons, 1865), p. 21, and cf. Bishop Forbes's Explanation of the
Articles (J. Parker, 1867), pp. 293 sqq.]
1 [This is a mistake. The Denison prosecution was quashed on technical
grounds at an earlier stage, and never came before the Privy Council at
all on its merits.  The question then raised, whether the doctrine of
Transubstantiation or the "Real Objective Presence," with its consequent
doctrines of sacrifice and worship, can he lawfully taught in the Church of
England, was ruled affirmatively by the Judicial Committee in the recent
Bennett case.]




132         Reunion of the Churches.
uncertianty for clergy and laity which is its inevitable
result.  The divergence of views between different
parties in this Church is greater than  any which
separates it from the Greek and Latin Churches, if the
three are judged by their formal standards.  Three
great parties or schools are contending for mastery in
the English Church,-the Evangelical or Low Church,
the Broad Church, and the High Church or AngloCatholic.  The first claims to inherit the Calvinist
system, formerly naturalized in England, and to represent the principles and doctrines of the pure Protestantism of the sixteenth century.  These Evangelicals are
wholly destitute of theological culture, and possess and
produce only a popular, not a scientific literature. The
old Calvinistic doctrine of justification is to them the
Alpha and Omega of Christianity.  In this party is
especially concentrated the old traditional hatred of
the Papacy, and the anti-papal interpretation of the
Apocalypse is indispensable for tickling the ears of their
hearers. They still exist on the credit of their greater
and more active predecessors, and by help of the institutions they founded; but they are not an advancing party,
but the reverse. On the other hand, the Broad Church,
as being the youngest school, are still in progress.




The English Reformation.             133
Created and sustained by the study of German philosophical and theological literature, they form an union'of sympathizing scholars rather than a Church party,
but exercise no inconsiderable influence on the views
of educated lay society. As eclectics, they recognise in
every large ecclesiastical body a mixture of truth and
falsehood, good and evil, but consider the English
Church the best relatively, on account of its combination of Catholic and Protestant doctrines, and the great
diversity of opinion cherished within its pale. They
attach little importance to the form of Church-government, but all the more to the maintenance of the union
of Church and State.
The third, and from our point of view most important
party, is that termed by its opponents the High Church
or Ritualistic, and which calls itself the Anglo-Catholic.
Its headquarters are at the University of Oxford, from
which it derives its name.  It repudiates the title of
Protestant. It has been in process of development for
forty years, and claims descent from the school of theologians of the seventeenth century, mentioned before,
reaching from Andrewes to Bingham.  It regards the
Church as the divinely ordained organ and keeper of
doctrine and the means of grace, and as standing or




134         Reunion of the Churches.
falling by the apostolical succession.  And as this
can  only be found in  the three great Churches
whose continuity has never been  interrupted,-the
Western, Eastern, and English,-these three together
make up the true universal Church; their substantial
agreement in matters essential to salvation not being
prejudiced by various excrescences, abuses, and errors
which may be found in them. The body of the Church,
one in origin, has in course of time, through the sin of
man and by Divine permission, become divided into
three great branches-outwardly separated, but inwardly united,-which, when the right time is come,
will grow together again into one tree, overshadowing
the world with its foliage.
The Oxford or Anglo-Catholic school does not consider
itself to be at issue with the doctrinal standards of the
English Church. It maintains that by God's grace the
Thirty-nine Articles, apart from the opinions of their
authors, were so composed as to admit of an interpretation in the sense of the ancient undivided Church, and
are therefore capable of being subscribed by men holding their views. And in fact three explanations of the
Articles in a Catholic sense have already appeared,-one
in the seventeenth century by the Catholic theologian,




The English Reformation.                        135
Davenport (Sancta Clara);' another in 1841 by John
Henry Newman, who has since become a Catholic; and
the last in 1867, by Forbes, Bishop of Brechin.
It is chiefly from this section of the English Church
that proposals and considerations on the subject of
reunion  emanate.  Their most influential theologian,
Pusey, has undertaken to show, in his last great work,
the Eirenicon, how  comparatively easy an  union would
be, inasmuch as the doctrines in which both Churches
agree are  so many.  But that was all written  before
the notorious decrees of the Vatican Council, the bare
possibility  of which  nobody  then  believed  in.   The
bridge for corporate union has now been broken down.
1 [Paraphrastica Expositio Articulorum Confessionis Anglicance, edited,
with Introduction and Translation, by Rev. F. G. Lee. Hayes, 1865.
Christopher Davenport was born at Coventry about 1598, and matriculated
at Merton College, Oxford, in 1613. He soon afterwards became a Roman
Catholic, and went first to Douay, and then to Ypres, where he entered
the Franciscan Order, taking the name of Franciscus a S. Clara, in 1617.
In 1639, on the re-establishment of the English Franciscan province, he
returned to his native country, and was appointed chaplain to the Queen,
Henrietta Maria. He was the author of several theological works, and after
three times holding the office of Provincial of the Order in England, died at
Somerset House in 1680. The Exposition of the Articles was published in
1646, and dedicated to Charles r. Of the Thirty-nine Articles, Sancta Clara
considers eighteen Catholic throughout, and two (11 and 12) concerned
with mere logomachies, while the rest require, but also admit of, explanation in whole or in part, and these last are examined at length, viz.,
Articles 6, 9, 13-15, 19-22, 24, 25, 28-32, 35-37. The work is supposed to
have formed the basis of the famous Tract 90, to which Cardinal Wiseman
refers in his Letter to Lord Shrewsbury, as containing " the demonstration
that such interpretation may be given to the most difficult Articles as will
strip them of all contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod."]




LECTURE VII.
DIFFICULTIES AND GROUNDS OF HOPE.
" YOU speak of a possible reunion of separated
Churches, while you are yourself obliged to
admit that the largest of them, which is your own, has
made union with her impossible by the decrees of July
18, 1870." This is the objection before us, on which I
proceed'to remark as follows.
Certainly no other Church will think of uniting with
a body which assumes the right, never before claimed
or heard of throughout the Christian world, of making
new dogmas, and places this right at the absolute disposal of a single individual. And for this reason, that in
dealing with a Church so despotically constituted there
cannot be any union, from the nature of the case, but
only unconditional submission and renunciation of all
knowledge and judgment of one's own. The notion of
binding one's-self to accept articles of faith to be here136




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.  I3 7
after fabricated and as yet unknown, contradicts the
fundamental principles of Christianity.l
When  a  great change  is to  be  carried  through,
a new  doctrine  introduced, and  a great institution
revolutionized, the first question to be asked is, which
side the younger generation will take? for to them
belongs the future.   We ask, therefore, whether our
boys and youths will really become inoculated  with
the new doctrines, and make them, as directed, the basis
of their faith, with which the whole edifice of Christianity stands or falls?  Will they say, " My infallible
master, my true lord and governor, to whom I am subject, body and soul, is that Italian priest who is called
the Pope"? I think it impossible. It is inconceivable,
because our whole education and training in Germany
is an historical one, and every page of history convicts
this system of spiritual absolutism of falsehood; because,
in the present condition and wide spread of historical
knowledge in Germany, our youth will inevitably discover that the new  dogma of papal omnipotence is a
1 [Accordingly, Archbishop Murray, of Dublin, when examined before a
Parliamentary Committee in 1825 on the nature and extent of Papal prerogatives, and asked whether there had been any change in Catholic belief
on the subject, replied, " With respect tojaith there can be no change; the
faith of the Catholic Church we consider to be invariable." —Sessional
Papers, 1825, vol. viii. p. 239 ]




I38         Reunion of the Churches.
product of fraud and forgery, and a source of ruin for
Churches as well as States. It is no longer possible to
shut out our youth from knowledge, to keep them in
ignorance of history. In that as in many other matters
they are deceived at Rome.  The Italian, Spanish,
South American, and French bishops, who conformed
to the Pope's will on July 18, possessed indeed not the
slightest particle of historical culture; but what was
and is practicable in those countries, in the lamentable
condition of their schools, is not possible in Germany.
That circumstance alone must upset the calculations
of the Vatican party, as far as Germany is concerned,
for even the women and country folk, who are still
reckoned upon, will be gradually and irresistibly drawn
into the stream of knowledge emanating from the educated classes, and carried along with it. Our young
students will either put aside the articles of faith made
yesterday, in the true conviction that they will be as
foreign to the future as they are to the past belief of
the Church, and will adhere to the ancient doctrine,
or-God grant it be not the commoner result!-on
account of these untenable articles will reject the whole
faith and abandon all religion.
I may be further asked how I can venture to cherish
and kindle in others hopes of reconciliation, when the




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.    139
old, well proved and implacable enemies of ecclesiastical
union-the men to whom  any union, which is not an
unconditional surrender, is an abomination-the Jesuits,
are at present more numerous and influential in Germany than in any other country.   Have they not
their strong fortresses and intrenched camps in the very
heart of our Empire? Are they not already dominant
in Westphalia and the Rhineland? Do they not keep
our bishops in complete dependence on them, and have
not these last just held up the Jesuits to popular
encouragement and veneration, as models of Christian
wisdom and virtue? Is it not they who pre-arranged
the Vatican decrees, and thus, so to say, lent a hand to
the Pope and the ultramontane bishops?
To this I reply as follows. I do not only believe
but know  that the reign of this Order in Germany
will not be of long duration, that their brilliant victory
-I mean especially the battles won on July 18 and
August 31, 1870,1 the Vatican decrees and surrender of
the German bishops-will at no distant future be
converted into a defeat. The clear testimony of history
leaves no doubt about it.
1 [The date of the second Fulda Pastoral, accepting the Vatican decrees.
-Cf. Reinkens' Unterwerfung der deutschen Bischofe zu Fuldc, Munster,
1871. It will be remembered that this Lecture was delivered in March
last.]




140         Reunion of the Churches.
The experience of three centuries shows that the
Jesuits have no lucky hand. No blessing ever rests on
their undertakings. They build with unwearied assiduity, but a storm comes and shatters the building, or a
flood breaks in and washes it away, or the worm-eaten
edifice falls to pieces in their hands. The Oriental
proverb about the Turks may be applied to them:
"Where the Turk sets his foot, grass never grows."
Their missions in Paraguay, Japan, and among the wild
North American tribes have long since gone to ruin.
In Abyssinia they had once (in 1625) almost attained
dominion, but soon afterwards (in 1634) the whole
concern collapsed, and they never ventured to return
there. What is left to-day of their laborious missions
in the Levant, the Greek islands, Persia, the Crimea,
and Egypt? Scarcely a reminiscence of their former
presence there is to be found on the spot.
Above all has the Society of Jesus devoted its best
services to its native home of Spain.  Themselves
children of the Spanish race and inheritors of the
Spanish character, for sixty years they displayed their
Spanish feeling throughout Europe; they laboured for
the spread and consolidation of the universal monarchy
of Spain. The result was the bankruptcy and depopu



Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.    I4 
lation of that once powerful kingdom, and its loss of one
possession after another, so that by the end of the
seventeenth century, to cite the language of a Spanish
writer, it had become an inanimate corpse, the skeleton
of a giant. In Spain itself they co-operated with the
Inquisition for two hundred years in impressing their
spirit on the life of the people, with this result, that the
higher education has been crushed, the scientific spirit
strangled, and the country, ruined in every department
of life, is still behind every other country in Europe
except Turkey, and, having no healthy literature of its
own, has to feed on the foreign literature of France.
Well might a Spanish diplomatist in Rome say, at the
time of the suppression of the Order, "The Jesuits are
the wood-worm that gnaws on our bowels." 1
They it was who brought on the German nation the
Thirty Years' War and its results, and to them Catholic
Germany owes the decline of its schools and its consequent backwardness in cultivation and long intellectual
sterility. It was they who completely undermined the
ancient German and Catholic Empire, and paved the
way for its fall. They, as the all-powerful conscience"C Quanto bien nos ha di venir de la expulsion de la carcoma que nos
roea las entranas."-Eslpiritd di Azara, p. 26.




142        Reunion of the Churches.
keepers of the Hapsburgs, Ferdinand I., Ferdinand Il.,
and Leopold I., have on their conscience the destruction
of the liberties of the States of the Empire, the thorough
enforcement of absolutism, the oppression and expulsion
of the Protestants; in a word, that whole crop of inextinguishable hatred which the house of Hapsburg has
sown throughout Protestant Germany. By their influence that intellectual quarantine was established, by
which the Austrian states have been entirely cut off
from  the rest of Germany, German culture kept at
arm's length, and that exclusion of Austria brought
about which we have lived to witness.
Bohemia has long been given over to the care and
charge of the Jesuits, and what have they made of it?
They have utterly destroyed the old Czech literature,
and have brought matters to such a pass that nearly the
whole Bohemian nobility is annihilated through executions, confiscations, and banishment, three thousand
families driven out of the country, and the Bohemian
constitution broken up. And now the harvest of the
dragon's teeth sown by the Order of Loyola is springing
up, and if the contest of the two nationalities there
admits of no peace or reconciliation, the acts of the
seventeenth century and their authors must bear the




Dzfficulties and Grounds of Hope.   143
blame. The working of the Order in the ecclesiastical
principalities may be exemplified from the condition of
the electoral state of Cologne, as recently described by
Perthes. There for nearly two centuries everything was
subject to their influence and direction, as confessors
of the Electors.
In England the destiny of the Catholics was for a
century moulded by the influence of the Jesuits at
Rome and the intense hatred which they excited at
home, and we have seen what a monstrous weight of
misfortune and oppression they rolled down on the
shoulders of their hapless co-religionists.
They tried to reintroduce Catholicism into Sweden
by means of a liturgy forcibly imposed on the clergy,
and with the help of King Sigismund, who was under
their guidance; Sigismund in consequence lost his
crown, and they were banished for ever from  the
country.l
In Russia they undertook, by means of their instrument, the false Demetrius, to establish Polish influence,
and bring the Empire and nation into subjection to the
See of Rome, but their proselyte and protege was
killed, and they had to quit the country. In Poland
1 Gejer's Geschichte Schwedens.




144         Reunion of the Churches.
they dominated the kings, the higher clergy, and the
nobility for a long time; and Poland is destroyed.
In Portugal they had King Sebastian entirely in
their hands, and he lost his army and his life in Africa,
in a foolish campaign suggested by religious enthusiasm,
and plunged his country into an abyss of misery and
ruin, from which it has never been able to rise to its
former prosperity. Then they did their best to promote
the Spanish dominion over Portugal, and that also soon
collapsed.  And when they again became powerful
through having the Sovereigns under their spiritual
direction, the country sank into a decline, from which it
is still suffering, through their intolerable misgovernment.
In France the Jesuits were the conscience-keepers of
the Bourbons, and their spiritual children, Louis xiv.
and Louis xv., paved the way for the Revolution and
the destruction of the dynasty, or rather, one may say,
made it inevitable. For the deep decay of the country,
the neglect of the greater part of the nation, and the
profligacy spreading from the Court, impressed on the
first acts of the Revolution the destructive character
which has to this day hindered the recovery of France.
And here too we must say of the French Church, that




Dziffculties and Grounds of Hope.    I45
it was the Jesuits who, during the time they ruled it
by means of the royal patronage, so devastated and
demoralized it, that even in the eighteenth century it
was powerless to cope with Voltairianism, and was
already falling to pieces before it was finally overthrown by the Revolution.
I readily leave to this Order the fate of the Vatican
decrees, the more readily as it has the duties of paternity to  discharge towards them.   For the Jesuits
excogitated, sketched out, and finally shaped those
decrees, though with the assistance of certain Bishops.
And now I turn to the friends of our cause, those who
have before me borne their testimony to it, and those
on whose co-operation or sympathy we may reckon.
There are three works of recent date occupied with
the question of the union of the Churches, all of
which have fed my hopes and raised my courage; for
they prove that alike in Germany and in England the
number of the friends of union is by no means small,
and is still increasing. The author of Pax Vobiscuml
is an influential clergyman in Franconia. He paints
in glaring colours the great and almost insuperable
1 Pax Vobiscum. Die kirchliche Wiedervereinigung der Katholiken und
Protestanten historish-pragmatisch beleuchtet von einem Protestanten.
Bamberg, 1863.
K




146          Reunion of the Churches.
difficulties which beset every step on the road to
reunion. There does not seem to him either the capacity or the call to accomplish the blessed work at the
present time, but the way should be prepared for it,
and every impediment, as far as possible, got rid of.l
Nor does he conceal that the contest for dear life which
both Churches will have to carry on, against the giant
powers of unbelief and destruction which are rising
up against them, can only be waged successfully with
their forces united.
The second work, by the Berlin preacher Schulze,
goes so far in the approval and acceptance of Catholic
doctrines that one may almost say that, if it expressed
the mind of a preponderating majority in the German
Protestant Church, four-fifths of the difficult work of
reunion would be already accomplished.2 Nor does the
work stand alone, as is shown by the fact that the
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung of Berlin  for 1870 has
communicated and indorsed its contents.
The third work, by Dr. Pusey, the views of which
are substantially shared by thousands of the clergy
and laity of the Anglican Church, goes further still than
1 Pax Vobiscum, p. 342.
2 Ueber romanisirende Tendenzen, ein Wort zum Frieden. Berlin, 1870.




Difficultis and Grounds of Hope.  147
Schulze's, for the famous Oxford theologian thinks that
all the doctrinal decisions of Trent might be accepted,
if only certain decrees were authoritatively explained
in the sense of the more moderate Catholic divines.'
Only the extension  of the papal primacy to  an unlimited supremacy, and the excesses in Marian worship,
and in the veneration of Saints and sacred pictures,
are, in the author's eyes, the great stumbling-blocks
that must first be removed.
We constantly hear complaints now  of a general
hostility to the Church. There is said to be a widespread feeling of alienation and dislike towards her,
variously and injuriously manifested in the press and
in society.  That such complaints should be made on
the Catholic side is perfectly intelligible. The party
now dominant in the Church is warlike and aggressive,
and constantly proclaims that it is striving for two
great objects.2 In the first place, it is resolved to rule
and subjugate everything, not only in the sphere of
1 An Eirenicon. By Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. Rivingtons, 1865. Cf. First
Letter to Very Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D., 1869, and Is Healthful Reunion
impossible? a Second Letter, etc., 1870.
2 [Compare Newman's description of the action of this same " insolent
and aggressive faction," in his letter to Bishop Ullathorne, published in
the Standard of April 7, 1870. It is quoted in full at pp. 355 sqq. of
Letters of Quirinus. Rivingtons, 1870.]




148         Reunion of the Churches.
religious but of moral and even political and civil life.
In the next place, it is resolved to undermine, and,
when the right moment arrives, to destroy the existing
public order of society and modern legislation, with the
liberty of the press, of religion, of teaching,.etc.; for
with these things-appealing as it does to the principles
of the Syllabus and the views of the Popes-it cannot
reconcile itself.  But with the Protestant Church it
is different.  Its clergy, allowing of course for some
exceptions, can neither be charged with lust of power
nor with hostility to the present order of society. And
here I am reminded of the strong saying uttered at a
Church meeting: "We have no flocks at our back;
ninety-nine hundredths of our people are in league
with the enemy."'  How  is this phenomenon to be
explained?  And how is one to explain another cognate phenomenon, which I will describe in the words
used by a distinguished Protestant divine, Bruckner,
in an address delivered at Leipsic in  1860: "Our
Church, notwithstanding all remaining differences, is
in many respects reverting to the condition of the age
before Constantine. Public opinion is again, on the
whole, enlisted, not on the side of Christianity, but
3 Mezsnar's Neue Evang. Kirchenzeitung, 1866, p. 6.




Diffculties and Grounds of Hope.    I49
against it," etc.; and he anticipates oppression and
sufferings for his Church.'
Here it is obvious that mere naked unbelief or
hostility to positive religion will not explain the
phenomenon; the mischief lies deeper. The general
superintendent and Court preacher at Berlin, Hoffmann, has lately written on the  "Causes of the
antagonism to the Church in Germany."2  He enumerates many, but above all the uncertainty and discordance of the doctrines delivered from the pulpit.
The impression left on one's mind is, that the evil
lies in the want of confidence and respect of the laity
for their preacher, in whom they see a man teaching
simply according to the measure of his attainments,
and from  his own subjective point of view.  They
have no feeling that he is supported on the broad
stream of Christian tradition flowing down through
eighteen centuries, and that his message is but the
echo of the voice of the whole Church reaching up to
Christ; that they do but hear from his mouth what
has been always and everywhere proclaimed in the
name of the Lord.  If then the German Protestant
1 Die Kirche nach ihr. Ursprung, Geschichte, Gegenwart, Vortrage, von
Luthardt, Kahnis und Bruckner. Leipsic, 1865.
2 See his periodical, Deutschland, Jahrg. i. pp. 224 sqq.




150         Reunion of the Churches.
Church was enlarged by union with other Churches,
and re-entered by this union with the ancient Churches
into their unbroken continuity of Church life and
doctrine, would she not gain in strength and authority?
Would not her testimony be weightier and her power
of popular attraction increased?
If we look closer, we shall be able to assume a disposition and readiness for union among all those who
admit that the communion they belong to is not absolutely the Church, the one and single Church complete
in itself, but only a branch Church, which cannot claim
to be itself that One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church
whereof the Creed speaks. This is maintained by those
divines who  adhere  most strictly to the Lutheran
doctrine.l They, as well as most Protestant theologians
at the present day, say that there is no communion of
which it can be affirmed that the fulness of the gifts
of grace and spiritual life dwell exclusively within its
pale, while all without is apostasy and heresy.2 It
follows that they must hold the one Catholic Church
to be now  split into fragments, each of the great
Churches having, of course in different degrees, its
1 So Harnack, Die Kirche, ihr Amt, ihr Regiment, Niirnberg, 1862, pp.
87 sqq.
Cf. Stahl, Die lutherische IKirche und die Union, p. 450.




Dzffculties and Grounds of Hope.   I 5 I
peculiar advantages and defects. But it also follows
that no single Church can claim Catholicity to the exclusion of the rest. The Greek and Russian Churches
do not do so. Mouravieff observes that the Councils
held in the East by Greek and Russian Bishops had
abstained from calling themselves " CEcumenical," because the Greek Church cannot regard herself as the
universal Church apart from the Roman.l
And here I will refer to a doctrinal ruling of Catholic
theology, which is admitted even by the most papallyminded theologians, and which as I believe may be of
the  greatest service  for the  cause of union.  It is
always taught in the Church that baptism  is what
makes every one a member of the true Catholic Church,
and as baptism  can never be obliterated or repeated,
anybody once baptized remains for ever a member of
the One Church, even should he pass over to another
sect or Church, only that he then loses the rights of
membership.   In the religious manual approved  by
Church authority for use in the Bavarian schools, it is.
1 Question Religieuse d'Orient et d'Occident (Moscow, 1856), pp. 223.
[Similarly the Popes who summoned the Councils of Lyons and Florence
for the reunion of the Greeks, Gregory x. and Eugenius iv., speak throughout in their official documents of "the union of the Western and Eastern
Church," of "uniting the Church of God," etc.  See, for the detailed
evidence of this, Ffoulkes's Christendom's Divisions, pp. 259-261, 337-340.]




152         Reunion of the Churches.
taught that those who have been made members of
Christ by the sacrament of baptism, if they remain out
of her visible communion only through involuntary
ignorance and error, are regarded by the Church as her
true children erring by no fault of their own.
And here it must be explained that the notion of
involuntary error is a very wide one, for it includes all
who cannot be charged with obstinacy (pertinacia)
and conscious rejection of recognised truth.  Consequently the great majority of Protestants are members
of the One Catholic Church.  Of the eighty million
Greeks and Russians this is self-evident. So broad is
the notion of Catholicity, and thus disappears what else
would be offensive and odious in the maxim, "Out of
the Church no salvation." Certainly Pius viII. in his
Brief of March 25, 1830, addressed to the Rhenish
Bishops, has again enjoined on them  the teaching of
this doctrine in the harshest sense, and without the
addition of any mitigating or explanatory interpretation,
and that with direct reference to the Protestants.' But
Pius IX. has not thought himself bound by this judgment, and declares in an Allocution of December 9,
1854, not only, first, that ignorance is an excuse before
1 Denziger, Eincheiridion Symb. et Defin., 1854, p. 423.




Diffculties and Grounds of Hope.   153
God, but, secondly, that "no one can undertake to fix
the limits of this ignorance, when regard is had to the
diversity of peoples, countries, and minds, and the influence of many other circumstances." The Pope therefore
teaches, or must by logical inference teach and inculcate,
"Judge not that ye be not judged; condemn no one who
is in error according to your opinion, for you cannot tell
whether his error is inculpable or not." That the prevalent practice in the Roman Catholic Church and the
conduct of many of her priests is in glaring contradiction to these theories, is perfectly true. If Popes and
Bishops wished to be consistent, they would be obliged
to acknowledge that the Church is obscured and her
visible evidence and attractive power lessened by the
gross abuses prevalent, the amount of superstitions
favoured and practised, and the spectacle of so many
scandals among the clergy, and that this excuses before
God the judgment of those who refuse the invitation to
enter her communion. But this doctrine of the Church
being partly visible and partly invisible does us excellent
service, first, in disposing of the old controversy between
Catholic and Protestant theologians about the visibility
or invisibility of the Church; and secondly, because it
enables us to say to all members of other communions,




154         Reunion ofthe Churches.
"As being baptized, we are all on either side brothers
and sisters in Christ, we are all at bottom members of
the universal Church. In this great garden of God let
us shake hands with one another over the confessional
hedges, and let us break them down so as to be able to
embrace one another altogether. These hedges are the
doctrinal divisions, about which either we or you are
in error; if you are wrong, we do not hold you morally
culpable, for your education, surroundings, knowledge,
and training make your adhering to these doctrines
excusable, and even right. Let us examine, compare,
and investigate the matter together, and we shall discover the precious pearl of religious peace and Church
unity, and then join our hands and forces in cleansing
and cultivating the garden of the Lord, which is overgrown with weeds."
The doctrine of conversion and justification is still
regarded in many quarters as the most important point
of difference. It was, men say, the turning-point of the
German Reformation, its fairest jewel and speciality,
the article of a standing or falling Church. The words
of the Elector of Brandenberg are often cited, who
impressed above all on the consciences of his theologians, when setting off for a conference with their




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.    155
opponents, to bring back with them  the little word
" sola," i.e. the doctrine that man is justified by faith
"alone."  And in fact this doctrine formed the principal subject of the public discussions at diets and
religious conferences, as at Ratisbon in 1541 and 1546.
But I must confess, at the risk of manifold contradictions,
that this is just the point where reconciliation seems to
me most easily attainable. On one side are ranged the
whole Western Catholic Church, the whole Greek and
Russian Church, and the greater part of the Anglican
Church; all these adhere  to  the ancient doctrine.
The Protestant doctrine, as it is most clearly taught in
the two Formularies of Concord and the Catechism of
Heidelberg, is no doubt absolutely irreconcilable with
the doctrine of the other Churches. The contradiction
is so glaring and decisive, that, were the Protestant
doctrine adhered to, all hope of reunion must be given
up. But happily this is not the case; the overwhelming
majority of German Protestant divines, and especially
those who make Scripture exegesis their speciality, only
differ in their manner of expression, and not in substance, from the ancient doctrine.l
1 [See, for some illustrations of this, my Catholic Doctrine of the A tonement, pp. 281-284.]




156         Reunion of the Churches.
The celibacy of the clergy can form no ground of
separation, for this reason, if for no other, that even
the Roman Church does not regard it as a divine law,
but only as an ecclesiastical ordinance, and does not
therefore hesitate to hold communion with the married
clergy of the Eastern Church. And, on the other hand,
Protestants, remembering certain exhortations of St.
Paul, ought to allow that it well befits the Church to
have a class of ministers who voluntarily renounce
family life, in order to devote themselves exclusively to
the service of the flock, and to offer to that body of
the laity who, in these days, are compelled by poverty
or their station in life to remain unmarried, an example
of continence which might else be represented as impossible.
So again with communion in both kinds.  The
withdrawal of the chalice in Western Christendom has
caused unspeakable mischief, and led to divisions and
wars; nor have I been able to discover any important
benefit resulting from  it.  The whole Eastern and
Russian Church, Uniate as well as Orthodox, administers communion under both species; and at all events
those Churches which are willing to unite ought not
to be rejected on that account.




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.  15 7
As regards the doctrine of the intermediate state, it
is clear how both Churches might gain by comparing
and  coming to  an  understanding  on their points of
difference.   Protestant theologians complain that the
popular notion of two states only after death-heaven
and hell, immediate beatitude or damnation,-and the
consequent disuse of prayer for the departed, "has
brought the people to the brink of doubt about eternal
life altogether."  They acknowledge that belief in an
intermediate state of cleansing ought to be received, and
prayer for the dead recommended, even for the sake of
the living, and indeed ought to be formally reintroduced.2
On the other hand, the Latin Church, by uniting with
the Eastern, has allowed the scholastic opinion of a
material fire in Purgatory as the means of chastisement
to drop;  and the substance of the doctrine can cause
no further offence, if once the gross abuses and misapprehensions are removed, which have incrusted its
kernel in practice and popular belief.
1 Neumann in the Zeitschriftfir luther. Theologie, 1852, p. 282. 
2 So Karsten and F. W. Schulze. [The testimony of two other eminent
Lutheran divines, Martensen and Rothe, are cited to the same effect in my
Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement (2d ed., W. H. Allen), pp. 282, 284,
and the list might easily be enlarged. For a catena of Anglican authorities
in favour of prayer for the dead-which might be indefinitely lengthened
by reference to living writers-see ch. xi. of Christian Doctrine of Prayer
for the Departed, by Rev. F. G. Lee. Strahan, 1872.]
3 [Cf. supra, p. 51.]




158           Reunion of the Churches.
As regards confession, it is enough to remember that
the need for some institution securing to the clergyman
the opportunity of acting directly on the conscience of
the individual Christian is keenly felt in every Church.
In the Anglican Church, confession, in the strict sense
of the word, has been largely practised for some years.
In the  German  Protestant Church, as far as I can
gather from its literature, there is a very widely spread
desire to replace the general confession, which has become unmeaning and mechanical, by something much
more like the Catholic form.
Then again, the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, and the
necessity or fitness of making it the centre of public
worship, as in the ancient Churches, has in our day
found  zealous advocates among  German  Protestant
theologians.  On the other hand, the Catholic theologians will not deny that the use of the living and
universally  understood  language  of the  people  is
preferable to the dead Latin, which only fosters the
popular fancy of some occult sacredness and magical
power residing in unintelligible forms.'
Among the points in which the Churches have come
1 [In the North of Germany it is very common at High Mass to sing
vernacular paraphrases of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc., in which the
people join, instead of the Latin; and authorized forms are published
for this purpose in many dioceses.]




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.    159
nearer than before must be reckoned the monastic institute. It is allowed by Protestants that "only by such
corporations can the wants be satisfied, which always
make themselves imperatively  felt in  the  Christian
community;' and in fact the Protestant deaconesses
correspond to the Sisters of Mercy in  the Catholic
Church.2   And we may recognise an unmistakeable
approximation and removal of old causes of offence in
the circumstance that in  the  Catholic  Church  the
female orders and convents, designed exclusively for a
life of prayer and contemplation without active work,
have disappeared, or are in course of disappearing; while
the communities devoted to the bodily and spiritual
good of others, the care of the sick and education,
display a power and activity hitherto unknown.
We must make  up  our minds to  encountering
numberless adversaries. Three classes especially will
set themselves to oppose our eirenic efforts,-the first
numerous and powerful in England and America, the
second  in  Germany, the third  everywhere.   First
come all those who recognise in the Pope the fulfil1 Rothe's Ethik, vol. iii. p. 424.
2 [The Calendar of the English Church for 1872 gives between forty and
fifty Anglican sisterhoods or convents, discharging various works of mercy,
corporal and spiritual; some of them having several daughter houses in
different localities.]




160o        Reunion of the Churches.
ment of the scriptural prophecies about the great enemy
of Christ and the Apostasy, and consequently think no
further reformation of the papal Church possible, but
look for its judgment and destruction. Secondly, there
are those theologians to whom the ancient doctrines
common to all Christian Churches are already a burden
and offence, of which they are anxious to rid themselves.  The  third  hostile army, and its name is
legion, consists of those encamped under the papal and
Jesuit banner. That no stone will be left unturned by
that party to hinder every approximation, and strangle
at its birth every idea of peace, is certain. The Vatican
Council was organized for the express purpose of making
all plans of reunion for ever impossible. Individual
conversions, indeed, are gladly welcomed; they are
drops at once absorbed and lost in the ocean of Roman
uniformity.  But there is to be no negotiation on a
larger scale, for bodies of men meeting on equal terms.
Some years ago a society was formed in England of
Anglicans and Catholics combined for the common
furtherance of the union of the Christian Churches,
and it was condemned by the Pope, at the instance
of Archbishop Manning.l
1 [The " Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom" by




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.  161
At the beginning, then, of any eirenic movement, its
opponents will outnumber its friends and helpers. But
we may count on the sympathy, if not the active help,
of those who have at heart the greatness and unity of
Germany, and who believe that the political union is but
half the work and requires an ecclesiastical union of all
its tribes as the completion, fulfilment, and crowning of
the edifice.   In  Germany the two religions are constantly becoming more intermingled, and the artificial
devices for keeping them apart are more and more felt
to be disturbing and hindering influences, superseded by
the movement and needs of the present, and are being
gradually put aside. It seemed, after the controversy on
the subject at Cologne in 1839 and the following years,
as if marriages between Catholics and Protestants would
become more infrequent, but they  have increased  of
late years, and will certainly continue to increase. And
these  multiplying  marriages  and  families  of  mixed
intercessory prayer, founded Sept. 8, 1857, and condemned by a decree of
the Roman Inquisition, Sept. 16, 1864, first published in England by
Archbishop Manning, shortly after his appointment to the See of Westminster, in a Pastoral dated Epiphany 1866. The official report, published
by the Secretary of the Association in Sept. 1868, gives the total number
of members as 12,684, including "Roman Catholics, 1881; Orientals,
685; members of miscellaneous Protestant communities, 92; of Church of
England, 10,026."-See Union Review, vol. vii. p. 74.]
L




162        Reunion of the Churches.
religion are already paving the way for the fusion of
the Churches, and encourage us not to lose heart. The
mixture and interpenetration of the adherents of the
two confessions advances unchecked.  There are no
longer any towns, and there will in time be no villages,
where Catholics and Protestants are not dwelling
side by side.  But that mutual tolerance and respect
which depends on the forms of refined social intercourse
is confined to the higher and educated classes. Among
the lower classes and the country population the
intermixture of confessions must either lead to a coarse
unbelieving indifferentism, or beget the desire and
need for a Church union, which may put an end to
those interminable religious troubles, frictions, and
asperities.
I have found it the almost universal conviction in
foreign countries that it is the special mission of
Germany to take the lead in this world-wide question,
and give to the movement its form, measure, and
direction.  We are the heart of Europe, richer in
theologians than all other lands; and the linguistic
knowledge indispensable for this task exists with us
in a higher degree than anywhere else.  What can,
what ought to be done? A negotiation between the




Difficulties and Grounds of Hope.   163
Churches through plenipotentiaries accredited on either
side promises no result; the mere proposal or attempt
would now, after July 18, 1870, be a folly. The right
instruments would be found in men, both of the clergy
and laity, who would unite for common action, first in
Germany, untrammelled by instructions, and simply
following their own mind and judgment. They would
soon draw  others to  them  in rapidly increasing
numbers, by the magnetic power of a work so pure and
pleasing to God, and would thus be brought into communication with like-minded men in other countries.
The basis of their consultations would be Holy Scripture, with the three cecumenical Creeds, interpreted
by the still undivided Church of the early centuries.
Thus would an international society of the noblest and
most beneficial kind be formed, and what began as a
snowball might well become an irresistible avalanche.
There would be no lack of cold contempt or furious
hostility to the work; but they would fail to overthrow it.
A Prussian official, who had long been concerned
with the ecclesiastical affairs of both Confessions, wrote
thus at the end of his public career in 1857:-" I am
certain the time will come, before the newly inserted




164         Reunion of the Churches.
stones are mouldered, when a common Te Deum  will
be sung in the cathedral of Cologne." 1
In this belief and hope I desire to live and die.
Nor could I wish for any better success and reward of
my Lectures than this; that my hearers should make
a like hope part of their life, carry it into their dealings
with members of other communions, and, wherever an
opportunity occurs of bearing witness to it, not remain
cold and dumb.  We Germans have lived to see days
of  serious  import and  joyful triumph,-days  of
victory and of national unity at length attained; and
I trust that our people will remain strong enough and
moral enough to maintain the lofty position divine
Providence has assigned to them.  But these days of
triumph have had to be dearly bought with terrible
sacrifices, and at the cost of rivers of human blood.
Here, in the sphere of religion and in the effort for
religious peace, a fairer crown and bloodless victory
awaits the German people,-more difficult indeed to
win than that victory over France, for it is the conquest of ourselves, our indolence, our pride, our selfishness, our prejudices, our easy self-conceit. But if we
are willing to march to this contest, we march under a
1 Eilers, Meine Wanderung durch Leben (Leipsic, 1857), vol. ii. p. 265.




Dzficulties and Grounds of Hope.  165
Leader whose  name  may inspire  the  most fainthearted with courage.  It is He from whom  descends
every good and perfect gift, whose word is not yet
fulfilled, but must be fulfilled in time to come: "There
shall be one fold and one Shepherd."
PRINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY,
AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS.